Jeanette Winterson on naming

From Sexing the Cherry:

They call me the Dog-Woman and it will do. I call him Jordan and it will do. He has no other name before or after. What was there to call him, fished as he was from the stinking Thames? A child can’t be called Thames, no and not Nile either, for all his likeness to Moses. But I wanted to give him a river name, a name not bound to anything, just as the waters aren’t bound to anything.

From Lighthousekeeping:

My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.

From Weight:

Zeus read out his decree. Atlas, Atlas, Atlas. It’s in my name, I should have known. My name is Atlas—it means ‘the long suffering one’.

Jeanette Winterson gives us names as talismans in these three novels I have read by her. Re-reading the passage about naming from Sexing the Cherry, I find it especially noteworthy. Waters are not bound to anything except themselves, it’s all about the cohesion tension, and Jordan with his river name is bound for life to the water, pulling him away from the Dog-Woman.

All three of these names fit like a glove, and fit Atlas’s cry: “It’s in my name, I should have known.” Long-suffering because your name is long-suffering, or named long-suffering because your author knew you would suffer long? Atlas is speaking to use from inside his own myth, and cannot realize—then, neither can Silver or the Dog-Woman.