My Name

When I’m having an existential moment, I think about why I’m named “Brian.” Why not “Fred” or “Wilma”? (Well, not “Wilma”.) Or, for that matter, why not “mongoose” or “cable- stayed bridge”?

Our names are seemingly arbitrary, but they have a big impact on our lives. There are studies that show that people with cool names end up being cool, and people with less cool names end up being dorky. I think the studies use other descriptors besides “cool” and “dorky,” but this terminology is good enough for our purposes. To illustrate the point, I was going to list cool names and less cool names, but then the less cool people would end up being insulted. Clearly they know who they are, having received less cool names and then having grown up that way. Since they have enough problems in life, it’s not necessary to add to them here.

I think “Brian” is a name of average coolness, not really on the A-list, but not a loser name either. Trying to optimize on coolness, I came up with a list of cool names for my future children. This wasn’t that hard to do: there were many cool names to choose from, it was obvious what they were, and all we had to do was pick one and the kid would largely be set for life. So I presented my list to the other party involved, but surprisingly she didn’t completely agree. She had her own ideas of names that were cool. I thought that her selections were moderately cool but not nearly as cool as mine.

It seemed that we had a slight disagreement, so after some thoughtful engineering analysis, I came up with a rational procedure to resolve it. When Lauren was in labor, I proposed that we play “baby backgammon.” We both wrote two lists of potential names, five for boys and five for girls. During each round of baby backgammon, the winner could cross off a name from the loser’s list. In the case of a gammon (a double win), two names could be deleted, and likewise for a backgammon, three names. I thought that this plan was exceedingly clever. Not only would playing backgammon distract Lauren from being in labor, but I was a better player (she wouldn’t admit it but it’s true). So unless she rolled all double sixes, all the time, the child’s name would be selected from my cool list and not Lauren’s less cool list. Everyone would be happy and the child would have a successful life.

In practice, there was a significant gap between the design intent and the actual construction. Baby backgammon only lasted a few rounds. Then as things got more intense, Lauren was no longer interested in the game. I don’t remember now how we decided on my son’s name, but it definitely wasn’t by playing backgammon.

Engineers have an ambivalent relationship with names. I’m guessing that no one played backgammon when trying to decide the name of a bridge. But the process is often not straightforward. The naming of prominent bridges often attracts a lot of attention. Recently, the new Zakim Bridge replaced an ugly, anonymous truss bridge in Boston. The full name of the Zakim Bridge is actually the “Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge.” Although most people use the shorter name, the awkward official name reflects the convoluted and somewhat bitter process involved in its selection. The first part of the name honors the late Leonard P. Zakim, former head of the Anti-Defamation League in Boston and a man renowned for bringing disparate communities together—for “building bridges” between them. The second part of the name recognizes an area landmark, and it was championed in response (in part) to a feeling that the local turf was being disparaged by the naming process. The compromise, instead of picking one or the other, was to include both. But even with the eventual compromise, there were some unfortunate darker undertones in the debate—ironic considering the nature of Mr. Zakim’s work and the graceful beauty of the bridge.

The names for more modest bridges are more modest. For run-of-the-mill highway bridges, most people probably don’t know what their names are, or that they even have names. But bridges cannot remain nameless. They must be identified on drawings, in legal notices for contracts and bidding, and for later maintenance. They have to be called something, not just “Hey you! Bridge!”

Without the emotional and irrational approach for naming the big bridges, the engineers get to take over. A sample naming convention can be found at the Oregon Department of Transportation Web site: ⟨http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/BRIDGE/docs/BrNaming.pdf⟩. The naming convention is based on a series of rules. The basic rule states: “Keep the name simple, preferably less than 38 characters, always less than 50 characters.” The basic rule is applied with a series of primary and secondary rules that cover all types of bridges. When naming a bridge in Oregon, what crosses over comes before what crosses under. There are also water rules, connectivity rules, ramp rules, and a slew of secondary rules that act as tiebreakers.

The stated advantage of the basic rule and all of its corollaries is that the resulting bridge name will fit in standard drawing title block without reduction of font size. But a disadvantage is that some subjective decisions are needed to decide what to keep in the name and what to leave out. Therefore, the bridge carrying Terwilliger Boulevard over Highway One, for example, can properly be named:

“SW Terwilliger Blvd over Hwy 1 & Ramps”

And not:

Does a bridge’s name have any bearing on its existence, like a person’s name? If a bridge receives a cool name, does it grow up cool? Without a cool name, will it end up demoralized, broken, and then demolished? For example, suppose that “SW Terwilliger Blvd over Hwy 1 & Ramps” was found to have serious structural problems. A decision needed to be made whether to rebuild or demolish it. Probably the bridge name would have no positive bearing on that decision—after all, who would miss a bridge named “SW Terwilliger Blvd over Hwy 1 & Ramps”? But, what if the bridge was named “God’s Gift to Mankind Bridge”? Maybe that would impact the demolition debate.

Some bridge names are inherently cool, like the Sunshine Skyway and the Golden Gate Bridge. Both of these structures are spectacular, cool bridges. But we may have a cause-and-effect issue here. It’s not obvious that the bridges are cool because of their names. They may be cool because they are cool, and they just happen to have cool names. Clearly the Golden Gate Bridge would be cool even if it was named the Futz Bridge. Also, in the case of the Sunshine Skyway, the opposite argument can be made. The current Sunshine Skyway is a dramatic, sleek, cable-stayed bridge across Tampa Bay. But its predecessor was comprised of twin hulking cantilever truss spans that did not exactly grace the bay. The previous Sunshine Skyway bit the dust, or more accurately, visited Davy Jones’s locker, when a barge rammed into a pier supporting one of the two spans, leading to a catastrophic collapse and many fatalities. After the disaster, there was little talk of keeping the intact structure and rebuilding the damaged one. Both were scrapped and replaced by the new structure. They kept the name but ditched the old bridges.

Driving around Massachusetts, you come across many small roadside signs along the right-of-way. The signs are posted on bridge railings and at the abutments. These signs list names for bridges in memory of soldiers fallen in combat. The bridges are not spectacular suspension bridges, but are mostly standard beam bridge overpasses. The bridges are nondescript, and memories of the fallen have receded with time. But somehow both are lifted out of anonymity by these small, poignant reminder signs. The memorial bridges become something more than what they were because of the names. Even if a rose by any other name might still smell as sweet, still we are reminded of the power of a name.