‘I am the Donald.’ On the sound symbolism and symbolic power of powerful names

This article draws from George Lakoff’s provocative proposal to rename Donald J. Trump to discuss the sound symbolism, social recognition, and symbolic power of proper names. It focuses in particular on the relationship between the sociolinguistic and political function of proper names to advance a three-part argument. First, I argue that in denoting without connoting proper names fix the identity of a referent regardless of its changing properties—a linguistic function that is particularly useful to the governmental techniques of the modern nation state. Such rigidity is also essential to the performative capacity of political leaders to act upon the social world through the institutions that are constituted in them and by them. Second, I examine the case of collective pseudonyms such as Ned Ludd, Luther Blissett, and Anonymomus, which have been introduced at different historical turns to pursue a variety of objectives. Although they retain the formal features of a proper name, in denoting without identifying, and representing that which eludes representation, these improper names allow different social groups to exert a form of symbolic power outside the boundary of an institutional practice. Third, the article suggests a way to bring together the symbolic power of proper and improper names through a campaign to replicate and disseminate the Trump name. Besides reversing the unconscious sound symbolism of the Trump name, such campaign would reveal the tautological nature of institutional symbolic power.