The Shandean System

 A while back, a friend introduced me to the semi-serious theory of "nominative determinism"—that is, the idea that people tend to take on, in adulthood, the traits or characteristics or profession that is most associated with their name. 

It's the sort of thing that—once you start thinking about—you can't help but spot everywhere. 

I had a childhood physician named "Dr. Stitch." 

I once knew a corporate lawyer named "Shill." 

I once took a bar prep course that featured a law professor. His last name was "Counseller." 

Looking back through old emails to my friend—I see a few other examples I compiled. 

At some point, it appears to have occurred to me that Ron Johnson is the only name one could possibly have in order to be the Senator from Wisconsin. 

"My name is Ron Johnson / I come from Wisconsin / I work in a lumber mill there..." 

I appear to have written to my friend at one point to make note of the fact that two of the most famous poems of Robert Frost have the words "snowy" and "ice" in their titles. 

Senator Chuck Grassley—serves as an elected official for a prairie state. 

The oft-quoted (in news articles) Mr. Yale-Loehr is an Ivy League law professor. 

And, in one case, I observed what could only be described as a case of reverse nominative determinism: a free speech advocate, perennially tweaking the nose of authority, whose last name was "Coward." 

(If some of us simply let ourselves drift along with the natural tide of our names—perhaps there are others who devote the whole of their adult lives to trying to swim against the current?)

My friend and I are hardly the first to explore this theory of "nominative determinism." In his book on "synchonicities" (which he defines as "meaningful coincidences"), Carl Jung speaks at one point of: 

"the sometimes quite grotesque coincidence between a man's name and his peculiarities or profession. For instance, Herr Gross [...] suffers from delusions of grandeur; Mr. Kleiner [...] has an inferiority complex [etc.]" (Hull trans.)

And in reading Sterne's Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy this week—I see that Shandy's father Walter made this same observation—and thereupon concluded "That there was a strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad names [...] irresistibly impress'd upon our characters and conduct." 

Indeed—so obsessed is Walter Shandy with the theory of "nominative determinism," that it becomes his hobby-horse—his fixed idea—his one great thesis that he wishes to bequeath to the world—

(the worst of all names, he concludes, is Tristram, and it is only by the unhappiest of coincidences that his son comes to be cursed with it—as he does a compressed nose, a head-first passage through the birth canal, and an unanticipated circumcision-by-window-sash)

—to such an extent that, as Sterne's narrator observes, in the same way that the heliocentric solar system could be described as the "Copernican system"—so too, should the theory of the occult power of names be dubbed the "Shandean system." 

I pointed all of this out to the friend who had first introduced me to the idea of nominative determinism—seeing it as yet another "meaningful coincidence" in itself—if not an outright confirmation of the theory. 

He started to get worried. "I was just joking," he said. "I never meant it seriously." 

But—Sterne observes—it is often the nature of hobbyhorses and fixed ideas to derive from such origins. 

Such theses, writes Sterne, "after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into our brains,—at length claim a kind of settlement there,—working sometimes like yeast;—but more generally after the manner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest,—but ending in downright earnest. [emphasis added]" 

Surely—in our present era—we are not lacking for kindred examples of occult notions and strange conspiracy theories that were conceived in "jest" or irony—yet somehow ended in terrible seriousness. 

Flat-earthism, anyone? The idea that Donald Trump should be President of the United States? 

Or how about this past weekend—when a single tweet ironically stating that Trump might be dead (originally penned as a complete joke) ended up triggering days of apparently serious-faced speculation on the condition of his health? 

Here—surely—is a warning, for those willing to hear it, against the dangers of becoming too "hobby-horsical" (Sterne's term). 

But—but—see the evidence above! Is it not incontrovertible? Are the coincidences not too plentiful and obvious to be meaningless? 

Mere "confirmation bias," says my friend. My brain is primed to seek out evidence and fit it to the theory—rather than fitting the theory to the evidence—

(which is why fixed ideas and hobbyhorses are such a potent source of humor, in Sterne as elsewhere—on the Bergsonian theory; why every comic character in literature has a "ruling passion"—to use Sterne's phrase—and as Northrop Frye has extensively documented). 

But this problem of "confirmation bias" too is something Sterne foretold: 

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates everything to itself as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of great use. (Tristram Shandy, Vol. II ch, xix.)

Heaven help us, then! I fear I shall only become more hobbyhorsical from here.