The Kardashian-West’s new baby girl is going to be named
North. It’s not a terrible name, all
things considered. If we see it as just
a name made up of letters and take away the meaning first, it checks out
decent. A lot of solid ladies names
start with N. Nora, Nell (or Nellie),
Nina, Natasha, Nancy, Naomi. But we
can’t ignore that it is a cardinal direction as well. If I had to choose a direction for a first
name, I think North would probably be the best one.[i] I also think West is among the two best
directions for a last name, but more on that later.
The
concept of North started out as a very arbitrary one. It refers to the top of the globe at this
point, but started with its origins in a time when the earth was thought to be
flat. The first real cartographers were
Europeans[ii]. That is to say, the ones we have most been
influenced by today. And fortunately
they were also explorers, because they lived by the sea and because they needed
more room to contain their growing population.
They looked in the direction the sun rose from and saw a lot of land,
but which had people on it. Then they
looked toward where the sun set, saw a lot of ocean, a lot of open space that
was relatively easy to navigate, and which they could pass through without
having to pay tribute or encounter enemies[iii]- and
they decided that whatever land they found they were going to claim. And during all of this, they were plotting
out their courses and making maps.
But
where to put their starting point, aka Europe?
Scientists have figured out that the human eye, when reading anything
(which by our nature was evolutionarily predetermined) our eyes are drawn top
to bottom and left to right, in that order.
So it was the most logical and inevitable for the early mapmakers to put
their homelands on top of these flat representations of the world they were
creating. They would just be easier to
read that way. And by virtue of putting
Europe on top of the map, they put most everything else below it and to the
right. Right, the secondary direction
the eye is drawn, was given to the first lands they knew for sure existed,
besides their own, because of their proximity.
It has come to be understood, however, that the Europeans put themselves
on top of the world because they thought they were the best. I’m starting to think this to not be the
primary reason, though North has now come to signify an improvement in relative
position.
It
would be hard for the West’s new child to go any further North, in many ways-
except, in many people’s opinion, in the name department. I, however, disagree given this couple’s constant
striving for success, hopefully one that they pass on to their daughter. But I wouldn’t blame her, after she grows up
and realizes the incredible circus she’s been born into, if she wants to,
idiomatically speaking, head West.
[i]
I once played the “I’m going to Hollywood” name changing game, which in this
case was Your Middle Name + The Street You Grew Up On. Mine came out Kenneth South (Numbers don’t
play well in Hollywood).
[ii]
Coulda been the Chinese, even, but let’s ignore that for once.
[iii]
Eventually pirates came around to correct this market inefficiency. (Not
ninjas)
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