You Know the Name.

Onomatopoeia.  “The soft soughing of a gentle breeze”; “Silent, almost sibilant, susurration of cosmic radiation...”

With an added bonus of alliteration.

‘Soughing’ and ‘susurration’ are both examples of onomatopoeia, which has been around in literature forever but was not described until about five hundred years ago.

Odd, isn’t it?  That onomatopoeic words can be used frequently and commonly for their specific effect of sounding like the sounds they describe and yet the name itself is almost unusable.

Nobody goes around saying “I heard a great example of onomatopoeia today, want to hear it?” but often people will tell you a ‘knock, knock’ joke (especially children).  ‘Knock’ is onomatopoeia, of course.

Possibly the most common one is ‘zip’ or ‘zipper’—it is how it got its name.

A friend of mine is called Ting Ming Ching.  No, really.  This is absolutely true.  We joke with him that his parents got his name by throwing cutlery in the air and listening to what it sounded like when it hit the floor.  Lovely man, and brilliant, too.

Another word is ‘anthropomorphism’.  We all do it.  We all anthropomorphise things but we don’t actually use that word.

Especially animals.  Pets.  We love to anthropomorphise pets.  We treat them as small humans, give them human traits and emotions and even pretend that they understand every word we say.

They are not small humans they are animals.  They have their own characteristics and instincts that are not remotely like ours.  Nevertheless we insist on doing it.

We do it to cars—especially if they go wrong!  Perhaps the battery is a bit flat so starting becomes a problem, “Come on, Girl.  You can do it!” we urge.

Strange it is that when our car is giving us problems it becomes female.  Hmm.  I think we shall leave that alone!

Where is this leading us?

It is a fact that there are many famous authors out there.  We could actually resolve that statement to ‘there are many authors out there who have famous names.’

For centuries authors and playwrights, specifically, have been able to walk amongst us in the street and not be recognised.

Politicians require to be recognised facially.  It is a vantage point from which they are elected.  Actors, of course, are famous, often, by their looks.

Actors, it may be said, are often the reverse—you look at them and say “Oh, that’s... er... wossisname?”

Writers have been anonymous to the public.  Mostly.  Of course there are famous authors whose face has lit up the night sky.  We all, now, have seen J K Rowling and Terry Pratchett; we all saw Asimov and Clarke.

Many authors’ faces appeared in their books but who looked?  Who would remember them?  You could put the book down in a café, look up and see that same author enter the café and yet not connect the dots.

Now we have so much TV and Internet.  The flood of information is almost overwhelming.  Between sundry mobile ‘phones, ipads/pods, computers, laptops, landlines, faxes, the archaic (but still used) radio, DVD’s, ‘YouTube’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Tweets’, ‘Twits’ and who knows what else, we are inundated with pictures and facts and news that is local, personal and international.

Author’s faces are becoming almost as ‘household’ as actors and actresses (can I still use that word?) but would we stop them in the street and say “Hey!  You’re Marge Blenkinsop-Smythe, aren’t you?”

So far we are still in the realms, except for the few, of authors being anonymous.  Only the names are famous to protect the innocent—and the copyright!

That’s a comfort.  That’s almost onomatopoeia.