SPOTLIGHT: Reflections On The Inevitable Folly Of Naming Things, Or Whatever [ESSAY]

Editor's Note: Jude Brothers, whose new LP titled Dogwood Maiden Voyage released September 25 via Gar Hole Records, is No Depression's Spotlight Artist for September 2026. Read more about Brothers in this featured profile and listen to their song "Oak & Ache."

The name my parents gave me isn’t my name. I remember as a child perching inside the bathroom sink at night with the tri-fold mirror folded around my face, staring at the infinite iterations of the uncanny sprite I had learned to recognize as ‘myself.’ Later, it was reflected to me once more in reading Jane Austen’s Jane Eyre: “Before the looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed... the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit.” 

I would practice calling different names to see if I could draw out their true form, see if perhaps some part of them, of me, would be activated if I only knew my real name. This simultaneous unknowing and feeling that I should know something fostered more uneasiness in me, and exacerbated that feeling of otherness – I couldn’t identify or communicate why, to be honest it’s still somewhat challenging. All I know is that the name, the visage of the creature, it all felt like something that had nothing to do with me.

In a beloved poem, T.S. Eliot’s “The Naming of Cats,” Eliot presents the concept that cats have three different names – one of them forever kept as a secret: 

When you notice a cat in profound meditation

The reason, I tell you, is always the same: 

His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: 

His ineffable effable

Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular name.

This concept really resonated with me, and helped form my own tradition of secret name keeping. It was and is, to this day, the most profound self intimacy: these private naming and un-naming ceremonies, my sacred treasure chest of selves.