March 11th, 2009
Namesake
My first job in marketing was as the assistant in the naming department at Landor in San Francisco. I spent my days reading dictionaries and ordering lunch for meetings. I was young, hungry, and in love with words. I took my naming personally.
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Goodbye Bafana movie full As a foundation for a career and a life, you can’t do much better than names. Paying attention to the tiniest syllables builds awareness, comprehension and in ideal situations: true understanding. Names–for an object, an organization, or an individual–contain great potential; something unborn, latent, a kernel of truth that can manifest a destiny.
I’ve been thinking about this because last weekend my own namesake passed away. Schuyler Chapin was 86 years old and a pillar of New York City cultural life. A “patrician New Yorker and white-shoe impresario who glided through society and a string of jobs in the arts,” according to his obituary in the New York Times. In 1973 my pregnant mother, sitting at her home in Kentucky read an article about Schuyler Chapin’s life in the city. Instantly and instinctively, she knew that would be the name of her child – despite the gender difference, geographical distance, and the cultural disconnect between our Scots-Irish heritage and the name’s Dutch origins.
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As a Dutch surname, Schuyler means “scholar” and was a name associated with monks and religious scholars. In English pronunciation, it suggests, “sky” and carries an association with something light, ephemeral, and spacious; something at once inspiring and sheltering. Were these the seeds of meaning she responded to? What was it about ‘Schuyler’ that struck her as perfect for her baby girl? She can’t say, but I think can…
I look at what Mr. Chapin and I have in common: a deep love for and appreciation of the arts, an inability to make great art, but a gift in recognizing it, assessing it, and promoting it. (Mr. Chapin’s obituary quoted him as saying: “If you know you don’t have talent yourself, you try to acquire the talent of recognizing talent in others.”). He was and I am students of the effects of culture on the human spirit. He lifted others up so that they can create. I try to do the same in my work. He gave artists space and shelter to do or make what they do or make. I see myself as a muse. Both the muse and the impresario are critical to the support of the arts, and as eager students, both in a sense carry out the spiritual underpinnings of the name in it’s original Dutch.
On Sunday my mother sent me Mr. Chapin’s obituary. Reading it gave her a sense of melancholy and loss. It did me too, along with a sense of gratitude for this great man who paved the way for me, taking care of our name and the seed it contains.
posted by schuyler brown
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