Names, Namelessness, Anonymity

What's In a Name? Part 4

A Name By Any Other Name

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;

And for thy name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself.

Act 2, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet – a play often called a “tragedy of names” -- features the famous balcony scene in which Juliet Capulet comes to her window and proclaims her love for Romeo Montague, unaware that he’s hiding below in the orchard. Juliet offers herself body and soul to Romeo, only, he must cast off his last name. It’s not like she’s asking her paramour to remove a limb (and she herself, earlier on, offered to doff her own surname). A Romeo sans Montague, Juliet reasons, retains his essential self – to Juliet, a most dear and (to her) perfect self. And, after all, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Juliet is actually asking here, “What’s in a last name?” She doesn’t see a problem with either of them holding onto their first names, or doesn’t touch upon the topic of cultures with just one name (started off by Alulim, first king of Sumer).

Be that as it may, let’s say Romeo acceded to Juliet’s petition. He’d still be a Montague scion. Even if all his other family members disowned their surname as well, they’d still be ‘the family formerly known as Montague’ – somewhat like the late rock icon Prince, when he became known for a while as ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince’ after eliminating his first and last name.[1]

This Shakespeare play -- set in 14th century Verona, Italy, and based on the actual lives of two lovers who died for each other in 1303 -- was written sometime between 1591 and 1596, well after the pivotal War of the Roses, a series of overlapping civil wars waged between the rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet for control of England’s throne. The 30-year, three-month-long war between the House of Lancaster, which was identified by its insignia the red rose (called the Red Rose of Lancaster), and the House of York, represented by the white rose (called the White Rose of York), at last came to a close in 1485. To herald the occasion, the two roses were made a hybrid, and became the striped Tudor rose. To this day, the Tudor Rose is the United Kingdom’s national flower, considered a symbol of peace. Point being: roses matter, names of roses matter, just ask the Plantagenets and Lancasters.

After asking “What’s in a name?” to support her insistence that it shouldn’t signify much, Juliet claims that no matter what name a rose goes by, it would still be a rose, because it would still have its essence, its singular sweetness. Above and beyond the fact that Juliet is comparing a common noun, a rose, to a proper noun, a name (though the word ‘name’ itself is a common noun, with any given name a proper one), there’s little doubting that Shakespeare was enamored with its sweetness. Of all flowers, the rose is by far the most mentioned by the Bard, as a noun, and as a pronoun, and he glorified it for its aroma.[2] Take A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oberon knows of a bank, Titania’s bower, “quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine / With sweet musk roses with eglantine.” The musk rose, R. moschata, is considered the sweetest smelling, though the eglantine, Rosa rubiginosa, also known as the Sweet Briar rose, comes close. Elsewhere, he makes mention of the Damask Rose (Rosa damascene), in his 130th sonnet. Musk roses also make an appearance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (“stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head”)

My hunch is that Shakespeare is in full accord with the narrator of Sonnet 54: “The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem for that sweet odour which doth in it live.”

What is it about roses that make them smell so sweet? A particular enzyme, along with the configuration of their atoms, scientists have discovered. Yet today, with industrial breeding, even the sweetest smelling rose isn’t as sweet-smelling as it once was. Consumers today prize color over smell. But even when at its sweetness peak, the rose does not smell so sweet to everyone. For a rarefied bunch, roses don’t smell sweet at all; they stink. The olfactory systems of some of my fellow humans register the rose’s smell as most unpleasant. Different smelling strokes for different folks.[3] Not only that, contrary to Juliet’s assertion, a rose does not smell as sweet if it were called any other name. When it comes to how we decide how something smells, names matter, a lot. In one study on the subject, researchers had people smell the same odors, which were given different names, from pleasant ones like “countryside farm” and “dried cloves”, to unsavory ones, like “dry vomit”, “human feces”, and even “dentist’s office.” Those who smelled the odors with unsavory monikers attached to them believed they didn’t have as pleasant a smell (or a pleasant smell at all) compared to those who smelled the same odors but with positive names ascribed to them. Names matter when it comes to what scientists call “olfactory perception.” So if a rose was instead called a rat, and a rat a rose, if someone who suspected Juliet and Romeo of carrying on an illicit relationship and ‘smelled a rose,’ the implications or consequences have a different outcome.