Thursday, December 28, 2006

What's in a name?



Ever notice how the names of female comic characters denote their sexuality and place in society and the names of their male counterparts proclaims their power and alpha-maleness?

Diana Prince: Named after a mythical Goddess, but her surname defines her in terms of a title reserved for male royalty.

Anthony Stark: The surname means devoid of adornment or artifice. With Tony, even in armor, what you see is what you get. Often what you get is an uber-powerful jerk with unlimited resources to crush an opponent.

I'm sure there are many others...

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5 comments:

  1. well I actually think Prince has more sense that Princess, or at least I haven't heard of anybody with the family name of Prince.

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  2. hmm, not sure about that one... selena kyle...? jean grey? scott summers? bruce wayne? lorna dane? wally west? casey jones? kara zor-l? t'challa? ororo monroe..?

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  3. Yeahhh. I'm just screwing around here. You could make any name seem like it's oppressive if you work at it.

    And Bunny Ball could mean "Rabbit Dance", but no one mentioned that.

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  4. Also the guy who created Wonder Woman was a well documented deviant...

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  5. And don't forget Stark could mean "naked". Maybe Tony's the one being objectified, here. In theater, we used to call them "tag names". And yes, I think they pretty much always mean something extra to the writer, even if it's not obvious to the reader. Nice post.

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