Proper names are poetry in the raw.
Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
W. H. Auden
Any child can tell you that the sole
purpose of a middle name is so he can
tell when he’s really in trouble.
Dennis Frakes
A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service. Henry David Thoreau
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for. Oscar Wilde
Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth’s marvels, beneath the dust of habit. Salman Rushdie
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. William Shakespeare.
New Zealand Baby Names 
Bewildertrix said,
October 11, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
I’ve long been fond of Wilde’s one.
A bit OT but I love this: “Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You’d have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four’s name were Albert, things would be hopeless”. – Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
And a bit of DH Lawrence:
“I don’t like your miserable lonely single “front name.” It is so limited, so meagre; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one…blood relation in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind. I am called Bertie, Bert, David, Herbert, Billy, William and Dick; I am a full-rigged schooner; I have a wardrobe as complete as the man’s-about-town”.
Love it 😉
babynamelover said,
October 11, 2009 @ 10:18 pm
Hehe those quotes are great! I especially like the second one 🙂 thanks for sharing 🙂