How do names attach themselves to particular objects and people and does this connection mean anything? This is a question which goes as far back as Plato and can still be seen in contemporary society with books of Names to Give Your Baby or Reader's Digest columns of apt names and professions. For the Renaissance the vexed question of naming was a subset of the larger but equally vexed subject of language: is language arbitrary and conventional (it is simply an agreed label for a pre-existing entity) or is it motivated (it creates the entity which it names)? Shakespeare's Names is a book for language-lovers. Laurie Maguire's witty and learned study examines names, their origins, cultural attitudes to them, and naming practices across centuries and continents, exploring what it means for Shakespeare's characters to bear the names they do. She approaches her subject through close analysis of the associations and use of names in a range of Shakespeare plays, and in a range of performances. The focus is Shakespeare, and in particular six key plays: Romeo and Juliet, Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, All's Well that Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida. But the book also shows what Shakespeare inherited and where the topic developed after him. Thus the discussion includes myth, the Bible, Greek literature, psychological analysis, literary theory, social anthropology, etymology, baptismal trends, puns, different cultures' and periods' social practice as regards the bestowing and interpreting of names, and English literature in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries; the reader will also find material from contemporary journalism, film, and cartoons.

Die skrywer Erika Murray-Theron wou weet waar die vroue in haar familie vandaan kom. Wat kry ’n mens van wie? Waar kom alles wat jý is vandaan? Hoe is die vroue in haar familie se lewe geraak deur trauma en groot wêreldgebeurtenisse waaroor hulle geen beheer gehad het nie? Theron se ouma Issie is op 3 Mei 1885 gebore; 133 jaar gelede. In hierdie verhaalbiografie gaan soek Theron in ou kookboeke, aantekeninge, foto’s, herinneringe, albums, briewe en geslagsregisters na haar ouma Issie se storie. ’n Lewe ontvou wat geraak is deur die verlies van ouers, die Anglo-Boereoorlog, die Rebellie van 1914 en daarna die energie wat dit verg om ’n groot huisgesin te behartig. ’n Skerfie glas wys hoe die verlede, selfs die verre verlede, spore op latere geslagte laat.

The book is about the relationships between parents and their children, wife and husband, belonging, and self-knowledge.