Naming, for a more hopeful future

In playwright Brian Friel’s masterpiece “Translations,” the British have come to Ireland in the 1830s to rewrite the incomprehensible Gaelic names of streets and towns and rivers into pronounceable English.

“A new map is being made of the whole country,” a character explains. Not literally, of course. The land abides. But in the renaming, the language, culture and memory of a people were in the process of being erased for the administrative ease and comfort of colonial masters, and to the profound loss of the indigenous population. “It’s an eviction of sorts,” a Brit lieutenant admits. Names matter. Naming things in public spaces is a privilege, and it has no small impact on a community’s sense of self.

To name things is to embed into the spoken and textual landscape of a place certain values, cultural touchstones, subliminal messages. It is to give urban streetscapes a political sub-text.

What we remember through the names of streets and parks, what we choose to commemorate in the form of statues and public honours, defines us.

“From Paleolithic tribes to modern nations, whoever controls memory holds power,” Michael S. Malone wrote in his book “The Guardian of All Things.”

Memory can vanish because of an absence of common reminders, just as it is sustained when such reminders are preserved in myriad civic manifestations.

That’s what’s up for debate in these tumultuous times, as old orders crack and power begins to shift.

The seismic events in the United States, after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, have exposed many instances of systemic racism.

The presence of names and monuments to inglorious individuals or events is arguably among them and as a result the statues of Confederate generals fall.

In Toronto, Andrew Lochhead looked up the naming origins of the city’s Dundas Street and found that Henry Dundas, the1st Viscount Melville, enthusiastically obstructed the abolition of slavery.

Lochhead began a petition to have the street renamed and had soon accumulated more than 10,000 signatures and an undertaking by city hall to look into it.

Mayor John Tory has asked the city manager to form a working group from relevant departments, including the Confronting Anti-Black Racism Unit and the Indigenous Affairs Office, to examine the issue of renaming streets.

“Renaming a major street or public space does create many practical challenges,” he said. “But we should have a process that can examine what are very important and relevant historical questions, along with all of the practical matters involved.”

Toronto is far from alone. There have been calls for the renaming of several Ontario municipalities whose namesakes had racist pasts, including Vaughan, Kitchener and Russell Township.

Advocates for change say the people for whom the municipalities were named have histories of exploitation, domination and enslavement that can no longer be accepted within their communities.

Some local leaders are resisting the change. But next month, Russell Township will discuss finding a new namesake while keeping its name.

The debate about renaming certain places as an act of liberation, as an opportunity for renewal, as a gesture of good faith to all citizens, seems to be gathering steam.

Even in the heart of the old empire, change is afoot. Protesters in Bristol, England, tore down a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave trader, and dumped it in the harbour of the port city.

While in Edinburgh, there have been calls to tear down a statue of Dundas — a measure a city council leader said would create “absolutely no sense of loss.”

Looking at what we call things, which aspects of history we choose to remember and celebrate by the everyday taxonomy of our environment, is a good and necessary exercise.

The names of things form the landscape and background to daily lives, constantly arising in routine conversation and exchange. Too much of our history, and the people who made it, are out of daily consciousness and earshot. Out of sight and out of hearing truly means out of mind. To fear calls for renaming of public places as an eradication of history is unfounded. History is recorded and there for reference. What we celebrate, through monument and name, is a different matter. It is the presentation to the world of who and what we are.

After all, if names and words didn’t matter, why do corporations and governments and politicians spend so much time parsing every syllable of what they’re to be called, make such a fuss over, say, the difference between customers and guests, change or transformation, affirmative action or quotas.

The change will inevitably be controversial. Names are almost by definition personal and as such emotional. There will also be costs and temporary confusion. But it is scarcely beyond us.

Names of public places have been changed in post-Nazi Germany, after German reunification and, notably, in South Africa after apartheid.

And to drive Albertina Sisulu Road from Oliver Tambo International Airport in Gauteng province is to know you have arrived in a different place, and can contemplate a future more hopeful than the past.

To fear calls for renaming of public places as an eradication of history is unfounded. History is recorded and there for reference