Naming conventions

In SF as in real human cultures, naming conventions may reflect family structures, sexual controls, and flows of transferring power thru the generations.

Feminist SF has considered at least two aspects of naming conventions:

1. the power to name, as a type of power. See:
   • Ursula K. Le Guin, "She Unnames Them", a riff on the Abrahamic tradition that Adam was given the power to name the beasts of the world.
   • Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea stories (and many other fantasy conventions) in which true names have power.
2. patronymic and alternative naming practices; see
   • Marion Zimmer Bradley's Free Amazons in the Darkover books, where women follow a matronymic naming pattern, e.g., Margali n'ha Ysabet. "From this day forth I swear I shall never again be known by the name of any man, be he father, guardian, lover or husband, but simply and solely as the daughter of my mother." Oath of the Free Amazon).
   • Barbara Hambly's duology, Sisters of the Raven and Circle of the Moon, in which women embedded in a thoroughly patriarchal culture are given new names of their husband's / master's choice on marriage, concubinage, etc. See, e.g.:

"Maybe too beautiful -- Strath Gamert tells me his son doesn't want to marry Foursie, and wants Twinkle instead...."

Shaldis was shocked. "Twinkle's only..." She countered on her fingers. "Twinkle's only eight! You mean Forpen Gamert? Who was suppose to marry me?"

Her father stopped in the doorway that led to the gallery above the garden, his face filled with infinite weariness and infinite shame. "We need Strath Gamert's partnership," he explained -- as he'd explained, with that same expression, two years ago when it was Shaldis who had been signed over as bride to the harness-maker's foul-tempered son. "Threesie and Twosie were already spoken for -- Lily Concubine and Green Parakeet Woman, I should call them." He gave the two sisters their names in the old style, the names their husbands (or more probably their husbands' fathers) had picked for them, with the proper suffixes -- Woman and Concubine -- that were now falling into general disuse.

1. • and:

"Leopard, go fetch us coffee," Cattail commanded with a wave, and the steward bowed deeply and departed. Shaldis had to admit she felt a little shock, since even slave men were never given the descriptive pet names that women -- and, she reflected, teyn -- went by. Even the lowest male slave was named by his father with one of the names that appertained to their clan, and that was that. Men kept their names, even slaves or entertainers like the graceful Belzinian who danced in the Circus District before scandalized crowds. Everyone Shaldis met was shocked, in one degree or another, that she'd taken a male clan name when she'd left her grandfather's house; it had never occurred to her that a woman would arbitrarily rename a male slave she'd bought, the way men routinely renamed women.