The Significance of Naming
By Gabrielle Simpkins
I've always been fascinated by language. The best part of English class was when the pinkish-red vocabulary book came out, presenting ten new words that I could then pore over for the week. I'd stretch the words out in my head, squeeze them into conversations. I became a master at denotations and connotations. All this to say, I've always been one to draw lines in the sands of semantics. I like words with boundaries, words that get specific; vagueness is confusing, generalizations usually too broad to mean anything. Words have to mean something. If they don't, what good are they?
nam·ing
/ˈneɪmɪŋ/
gerund (noun)
a means of identifying oneself to, and for, oneself; a way of understanding and identifying one's own feelings. A form of internal legitimacy and validation.
When I realized I was a lesbian, I found a word many could feel—but few could define.
Lesbian was a word I had always known, but never applied. In my world, lesbian was more of a concept than a real, tangible identity. I wandered through middle school imagining a beautiful church wedding to a man who looked like . . . nothing specific. I waited patiently to understand what a "crush" was, an idea so instinctual to all my friends. I waited through seventh and eighth grade—perhaps I was just a late bloomer. I waited through ninth and tenth too.
At some point in this era, I had a social justice awakening. I took to online spaces to discuss discrimination and politics, became part of communities that weren't possible at my small Catholic school. For the first time, I personally knew people of different faiths and countries. I made friends who were openly nonbinary, asexual, and bisexual. In their experiences, I found a common thread. It was an everyday epiphany: "I thought I was the only one!” and “I can’t believe there’s a word for this!" (Woehle, 2023, p. 3).
nam·ing
/ˈneɪmɪŋ/
present participle (verb)
in doing so, a person seeks to identify themselves to, and for, others, often in hopes of finding community and forming interpersonal connections. By doing so, one can experience a sense of external legitimacy and validation.
I tried on the word bisexual, but it didn't quite fit. I had finally realized that I liked women, but I still thought I could also like men, that maybe my “type” of man was just hyper-specific. I toyed with the idea that I might be demisexual, but it felt one-sided.
It took until I was 20 to realize that the childhood dream of the beautiful, heterosexual church wedding was off the shelf. Had never belonged on the shelf in the first place. I felt at once wild and at rest when I realized that I didn't even want that anymore. I was a lesbian. And "suddenly it was like there was a door where I had previously seen a wall” (Myers, 2015, 2:38-2:45).
nam·ing
/ˈneɪmɪŋ/
participle adjective
a descriptor for the practice of labeling an individual or group perceived as possessing a particular characteristic. Can describe the act of “othering” or ostracizing an individual or specific group, intentionally or unintentionally.
Queer and neurodivergent people often grow up experiencing stigmatization as a fact of life (Schroeder & Theophano, 2019, p. 1). The resultant shame all too often becomes self-loathing, and the self-loathing all too often becomes debilitating.
At first, mentors in my life usually thought I was smart. To them, that was the most frustrating part. For such a smart girl, no one could understand why I was so . . . lazy. When I was younger, it had been almost a bit cute; I was known for "dilly-dallying," daydreaming, and plodding through tasks. As I got older, it became less cute. Instead of dilly-dallying, I was procrastinating. Teachers’ notes about my "daydreaming" turned into remarks about my "absent-mindedness." Even still, I knew these terms were euphemistic. When someone was really frustrated with me, it was always the same word: lazy. It always came with a disappointed tilt of the mouth, and was often delivered on the back of a sigh. It was a shame I was so lazy. If not for this one terrible character flaw, perhaps I could become someone, do something great.
Though far from the worst name I've been called, lazy always hurt the most. I grew up believing I had simply been born with a trait that made me worse than others. I tried to hide my inattention and dysfunction, believing these were issues of character that I was too weak to correct. I lived riddled with shame and stigma. It wasn't until this past May that I finally got an ADHD diagnosis. I felt relieved and angry at once. I had been denied resources, assistance, and life-changing medication for years. All I’d been given was a name.
nam·ing
/ˈneɪmɪŋ/
noun, verb, adjective
All of these at once.
I have a new understanding of naming. Of names. Their resistance to being specifically defined isn't their weakness—it's their power.
Names are the power struggle between retribution and reclamation (Irons, 2021, p. 3). Names are identity, politics, and identity politics. They're as small and personal as someone inventing a microlabel (Walia, 2021, p. 3) and as vast as the umbrella of queer (Woehle, 2023, p. 2).
I have spent much of my life trying to understand the minutiae of definitions, only to find that a name exists outside of any boundary: good or bad, large or small, vague or specific.
It doesn't get queerer than that.
Gabrielle Simpkins is a sophomore in SUNY Canton’s Health Care Management Bachelor of Science degree program. This essay started out as a discussion forum post in Dr. Lee’s LGBTQ Lives & Literature course.
References
Irons, C. (2024, May 21).The dirty, complex, and empowering history of the word “queer.” The Daily Dot.
PBS NewsHour. (2015, April 23).The quiet revolution behind the word “transgender” [Video]. YouTube.
Schroeder, S., & Theophano, T. (2019, January 28). Why terminology and naming is so important in the LGBTQ community. OUPblog.
Walia, K. (2021, February 9). Putting a name to the feeling: Microlabels in the LGBTQ2+community. The Western University Gazette.
Woehle, A. (2023, May 31). Umbrella terms and microlabels are the language of inclusion.’” The Michigan Daily.