This project seeks to contribute to beginning conversations around the rhetorical implications of names and how individuals navigate their cultural identity via their names. Names were studied by ancient Greeks in the field of onomastics, and many scholars outside of rhetoric have studied the role of names in construction, development, and maintenance of one’s identity. Despite the inherent rhetorical nature of names, the field of rhetoric has yet to fully acknowledge and theorize names in rhetorical studies. Thus, this study invites rhetorical scholars to consider a rhetorical onomastics. I marshal seven name narratives from rhetors of immigrant families, racial minorities, and other historically marginalized groups and acknowledge the stories and embodied experiences that have been long overlooked as names were regarded as insignificant, benign labels. I draw from J. Logan Smilges’ continuum model of rhetorical silence and argue that engaging with rhetorical quieting and rhetorical amplifying is a constellating experience, inclusive many rhetorical situations, for individuals who must negotiate attention toward or away from their racial-cultural identity. While offering an analysis of name narratives, paying special mind to rhetorical ecologies and instances of rhetorical quieting and rhetorical amplifying, I also offer my own name narrative, which inspired this study.
