TRANSCRIPT: Notes From Dunfanaghy 12 – Naming
Hi, it’s Megan. Welcome to today’s Notes from Dunfanaghy. Today I’m thinking about naming. And this kind of follows on from what I was talking about in yesterday’s voice note about intimacy.
So how am I thinking about naming? So, specifically, I’m working on a book at the minute, and it is a memoir, and it’s very much based in and around Dunfanaghy, and talks about my experiences there. And so I’m finding myself writing about the sea a lot, and I’m kind of frustrated because there are not enough English words for the sea, there’s not enough precision. I’m struggling to find the precision that I’m looking for in the English language.
And I don’t speak Irish, I have almost no Irish, but I have been drawn to the language more and more over the last year or two. It has actually begun to feel like — I don’t know if compulsion is the right word — but, you know, I used to think that I might try and learn Irish when I’m maybe in my 50s or 60s, and I imagine I will have more time. But certainly in the last year it feels like I have no choice in the matter. The language is pulling me in. It’s coming for me, whether I like it or not.
And so I still don’t speak it, but I’m reading about it more and more, I have more and more awareness. And one of the things that I have come across and discovered is the fact that in Irish, there are so many words for the sea. There are hundreds of words for the sea, the landscape around the sea, these very specific, you know, like the particular kinds of waves and what those waves mean.
There is an Irish writer called Manchán Magan, and he did a project a few years ago called Sea Tamagotchi, where he travelled along the west coast of Ireland collecting words related to the sea and sea life in Irish — you know, some of these words that are in danger of dying out. And so as part of his project, he collected these words, and just the richness of the language, and the precision around all of these different things. You know, so there’s a word for the open sea, there’s a word for a flowing sea, there’s a word — there’s like 10 different words for the kinds of waves that you might encounter off a particular part of the coast of Donegal.
So there’s just this rich, rich language that is reflective of the intimacy that the people had in previous generations with the landscape of the sea.
And so this is one of the things that I talk about at the retreat. I talk about — there is an Irish word which basically is this kind of tradition of naming the land, but you name the land in a way that the lore is also conveyed through the name. And so to name a place is to know a place. And quite often what has happened with English translation of Irish place names is you end up with a sound-alike, and so all of the meaning, all of the richness and the complexity of what was in that name is lost.
But I think about this when it comes to our work as well. So I’m obsessively trying to understand: what is my work? To name my work for myself, to have that kind of intimacy with the work, because that’s what lets me go deeper and deeper into it. It’s what gives me the precision that I need to be able to know exactly what my work is, and how can I lean into it more.
And up until a few years ago, the only conversation that I ever had around my work and naming was — it was always like a branding conversation. And the way that that usually went was, you know, you might come up with a name, or a few different names, for a business or product or a service or whatever that is, and then you would be encouraged to take it out to the world and see, does that name make sense to anybody else? Are you conveying what you want to convey about whatever it is you’re selling?
And I’m not really interested in that at all. I’m interested in: what is the language that means something to you? How can you name yourself and name your work in a way that gives you deeper access to what is meaningful about your work to you, that gives you deeper access to the work itself? Like, how can we name all of the different parts of the anatomy of our work, in order to be able to embody it more?
And so we talk about naming a lot on the Dunfanaghy retreat. It’s something I come back to again and again with clients when I work with them long term as well, you know, it’s this ever-evolving, deepening thing.
And so I think whenever we reduce conversations around naming to branding conversations, we do ourselves and our work a massive disservice. I think it’s really important to name ourselves in the language that is meaningful to us, which doesn’t necessarily mean that that language is what you then use out in the world. Like, the language that I talk about in Dunfanaghy, the way that I’m encouraging you to name yourself and name your work there, it’s a very private thing, and it might be just for you. It might be just to aid your understanding of your own work. It might be something that you end up using out in the world, and that’s fine, but I don’t really care about that. I care about: does this mean something to you? Does this have roots for you?
So that’s what I have for you today. Thanks for listening.