How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am, having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.

Our names are labels, printed clearly on the bottled essence of our past behavior.

I don't like your miserable, lonely single 'front name'. It is so limited, so meagre ... It is worn threadbare with much use. It is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat ... Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.

Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble.

To give a name to a thing is as gratifying as giving a name to an island, but it is also dangerous: the danger consists in one's becoming convinced that all is taken care of and that once named, the phenomenon has also been explained.

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know it is safe in their mouth.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.