New Student Convocation

It is great to join you for this discussion of a wonderful book, a shared story that has already become part of your shared experience at NYU.  This story is now part of your NYU story.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake traces the transition of the main character, Gogol, from infancy to childhood adolescence. It tells a story of he left the trapeze bar of childhood to grasp the trapeze bar of adult life.

When I met with your parents during orientation, I told them about how Erik Erikson described the stage of your life that you are in right now as like being a trapeze artist: You are in the moment where you have left hold of the bar of your childhood, your parents’ protection, and their authority, reaching now but not yet grasping the bar of adulthood.  You are in the moment where you are creating the story that will be your life. 

What might Jhumpa Lahiri’s book do to help you?  Well, what’s in a name?   A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, says Juliet.  But you know about the Capulets and Montagues, the   Hatfields and McCoys:  Names can get you killed. 

Naming is sacred.  Some Native American tribes believe the spirit is in the name and so the baby is named by the parents but never spoken.

For religious Jews, Hebrew names are used for calling people to the Torah. Other names are used for everyday.  

There are many books about names and people spend their months of pregnancy pouring over them. I remember what my mother told me about naming my children.  She recommended that I stand at the top of the block where we lived and yell the name as loudly as possible, because, she said, that is what you will be doing, and you ought to hear how it will sound. 

And people seek immortality by linking their names with things:  What do you want to carry your name:  A flower? (the Calla lily),  a cosmetic? (Estee Lauder), clothes? (Donna Karan), a star? 

And, of course, businesses spend millions trying to find the right name for their products.    

In Gogol’s culture, the name is given by the grandparents, indicating how important the name is -- it  takes a wise elder to bestow the correct name.

Names, of course, make us legal and a baby must have a name on the birth certificate to leave the hospital, so Gogol’s family makes a cultural error and puts his pet name on the birth certificate.  This is Gogol’s first act of separation from his culture and family.

Names define family connections and the relationships among family members:  “It was only after the betrothal that [Ashima] learned Ashoke’s name” (p. 9).  But Ashima does not call her husband, Ashoke, by his name.  She never utters his first name, though she clearly knows it. “It’s not the type of thing Bengali wives do,” Lahiri tells us. “Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband’s name is something intimate and therefore unspoken.”  (p. 2).  Naming also reveals something about gender roles, too. 

And Lahiri marks Ashima’s passage to being a wife with her name:   “These were her last moments as Ashima Bhaduri, before becoming Ashima Ganguli.”  (p. 9).

Relatives all have special names in The Namesake.  Didi is “older sister,” a term only Ashima’s brother can use for her. This name marks a special relationship, a formal relationship that is unique and therefore precious (p. 41, 46).

Pet names are important, because of the special relationship they signal.  Do you have nicknames for your family members?  Have you developed a nickname for friends or for yourself to mark that relationship as special?   Names, in other words, tell us what is important (Sir? Madam? Doctor? Professor?  President?) and pet names tell us  that we should not take our lives so seriously.

Lahiri takes care to tell us what the Bengali name for a pet name, duknam, means: “The name by which one is called by friends, family and other intimates, at home and in other private unguarded moments.”  Public moments are guarded (p.  26) and require us to use the formal, official name.  “Pet names are,” in contrast, Lahiri writes, “a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people” (p. 26). 

Constancy in character is the result of successfully navigating the transition to adulthood.  Erikson tells us that a mark of adolescence is ‘trying on’ different identities.  Think back to your high school days, did you ‘try out’ the role of any special movie idols? Your contemporary James Dean or Marilyn Monroe?  Was that Madonna? Or did you experience your post-modern moment and insist on a uniform of all-black?

When naming mistakes are made, it marks important danger points in the novel. For example, Moushaimi knows both of Gogol’s names.  But Lahiri signals that there is danger in their relationship:  Dmitri, Moushaimi’s husband, does not know Gogol’s name (p. 264). This also harks back to Gogol’s affair with Bridget: he did not know Bridget’s husband’s name, either.

Names also define a culture.  Ashoke and Ashima try to fit into their U.S. university community and they struggle  to learn the names of the architecture of the area (cape, saltbox, raised ranch) and the names of their neighbors:  Johnsons and Hills and Mertons; names so different from their own. Of course, Gogol’s story and the story of his family is also the story of the immigrant.  And the immigrant story is a story of changes, losses, and new beginnings.  Immigrants must leave an old culture, and must also decide what to keep of that culture.  Immigrants often change names (names often were shortened at Ellis Island) and certainly change cultures.  Like a passage to adulthood, immigrants leave the familiar trapeze bar of one culture, and grasp the new trapeze bar of the newly embraced culture. So Gogol’s story is not just that of one person’s maturation, but also the story of all immigrants’ transitions.  

Your new student seminar experience has been one of telling your story of transition.   You have been sharing the meaning of your name, the names of people you love, the people you miss.

You have been telling your stories and building the bridges that create shared meanings, the story of your transition to adulthood.

And this year, we, too, will mark a transition in our school, with a new name.  For 116 years, the Steinhardt School, which began as the School of Pedagogy, has been changing to meet the needs of society.  This spring we will celebrate our new name:  the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.  We will celebrate the diversity in our school of teachers, psychologists, speech therapists, artists, nutritionists, communication and media experts, and musicians.

We will have a party and an academic convocation to celebrate and mark the latest developmental transition of the Steinhardt School and our new name.  I hope you will be part of this transition and part of this naming celebration.

Dean Mary Brabeck