A Rose By Any Other Name

I'm filling in for Jacqueline, and also on a blog tour at the moment, as mentioned in my regular (Sunday) blog.

Yesterday, Linnea talked about ultra long distance courtships, where most of the sensory cues are missing. You can't see the guy, you can't smell his pheromones (which is important), you can't hear his voice.

By the way, some actors have the most wonderfully attractive voices, IMHO. Anthony Hopkins. The late James Mason. Clint Eastwood. James Earl Jones.

Who might you fancy if their voice was all you had to go on?

Anyway, I was thinking about Linnea's blog while doing my morning-after blog-tour thing. Readers are offered prizes for the most interesting question, comment, or discussion starter.

A thread about my guilty pleasures evolved into a discussion of what Darth Vader's name meant, which turned to the pronunciation of foreign names, and whether or not Vader means father.

Having lived in Germany, I know perfectly well what father is in German. Vater. And I know how it is pronounced. Which brings me, with streaming eyes, to the thought that a person's name would be much more important than it is now.

How much respect or terror would Darth Varter command?

Would all the son-of surnames (Johnson, Masterson etc) be useful?

On Mars, it might be rather silly to have a name that makes one homesick for the green valleys, hills, and vistas of Earth: Belmont, Beaumont, Green... or of the trades ones ancestors handed down from father to son: Farmer, Baker, Mason, Fishmonger.

Flattering descriptive names might be quite effective: Richman, Handsome, Strongback, Goodmind, maybe even Goodnight.

Possibly, in a future world, we'd all use one of those ethnic descriptions that we see on the occasional census. In that case, my great grand-daughter's last name might be Caucasian.

Are names important to Americans? Given that two suitors were equally good looking (in their different ways), equally intelligent, equally good-tempered and humorous, and both shared ones interests, might a girl be swayed in her choice by which name would sound better as her married last name?

Is it taboo to wonder whether girls could really be that superficial?