What's in a name?

[sauvin]

OK, I misread the original post, and I mean, I misread it completely, and I apologise.

My last name's pronunciation depends rather heavily on where you're from. A German would say "zowfin", a French person would say "soh vaign", an American would say "sawvin", unless the American is from Kentucky, in which case it's apt to come out something like "swavun". Mispronounce my last name and I may not even notice. I've also been called "subbin", "sohvine" and a passel of rather unflattering things.

My first name, though, is harder to mutilate. It's a single syllable, and variation on its "proper" pronunciation is less wide. Benn, Behn, Vehn (to a Mexican) and Bee-yin among African Americans and folks from the deep South. Outside these pronunciations, call me anything else and I may not understand that it's my name even being uttered; if I do so understand, my first impulse will be to believe I'm being mocked or derided in some way.

Eli's case may be a bit different. "What do I call you, this that you are?", and the answer is still consonant with what I'd suggested before. She answered "Eli", because she's not a boy, not a girl, not young, not old - not a person at all. She has a single, simple label that has no inherent meaning, makes virtually no concrete reference to her, her apparent age, race or anything. I'd suggest this is something of an evasion, a convenient way of sidestepping all these many things she believes she is not, and not necessarily an insistence that she be referred to by her "proper" name. Also given that she's probably been known by many different names, all the better to remain under the radar, and has had to respond to these many different names, the only real meaning Eli's name might have for her is that somebody who knows her well knows her true name.

[EEA]

It's an interesting question.
I think that Eli probably changed his name over time. Maybe once he became a vampire he decided that Elias had died. And he became just Eli.
And I have written a FF in which a certain someone can't spell Eli's name.
I agree about the importance of a name. My name has been mispronounce when I was a kid, and I really got angry. I would think. That isn't how you pronounce my name.

[gattoparde59]

Interesting idea because you have set a trap for Eli. My interpretation is that by saying "Elin" the person in question is saying that "Eli" is short version of Elin, or Helene or Ellen etc.

To correct the person by replying "Elias" would mean he would have to open up and do some explaining. My gut reaction would be he would say "No, just Eli." It depends on the relationship Eli has with this person you are thinking of, just as it had with Oskar.

Interesting passage you quoted here, Eli seems to be asserting his humanity by his reply of Eli. He is not a "thing," he is Eli.

[PeteMork]

... my question wasn't about how Eli percieves his gender, but what importance he might put into the name with which he chooses to present himself.

I think the two are closely related in Eli's case. I don't actually believe he picked Eli because it was 'Elias' abbreviated; he picked it because it was a girl's name first, and closely related to 'Elias' second. IMO he, for whatever reason, no longer wanted to be thought of as a boy. Lombano's comment in the "Eli's Androgyny" thread illustrates this nicely. He's discussing the place in the book where Eli picks a dress to wear after bleeding:

An important detail is that Oskar, when Eli asks what clothes he should take, replies 'Something of mine.' Thus Eli had several reasons to, at that moment, take something of Oskar's rather than a dress:

-Oskar himself had told him to do so.
-Oskar's clothes would be more likely to be his size - we are specifically told the sundress was too big.
-A missing dress would be more likely to be missed by Oskar's mum than something of his.

An actual girl, given the last two motives, may well have taken something of Oskar's - something gender-neutral like sweatpants and a t-shirt, say. In any case pragmatism dictated that he wear something of Oskar's. My interpretation is that Eli seizes a feminine role partly for pragmatic reasons, but also as a way of clinging to a human role - if you can't be a boy, what's the obvious alternative? Also possibly as to define his role for himself (a quasi-girl) rather than let his castration define it (a mutilated boy).
As for JAL's motives for making Eli a castrated boy, apart from de-sexualising the relationship, it creates a struggle for Oskar that wouldn't be there if he were gay or Eli were a girl, showing how unconditional his love is.

I might write a proper essay on this if I can get round to it...

If this is indeed the case, I suspect Eli would be quite protective of the name he has chosen for himself.

[lombano]

Eli chose "Eli," not Elin or Elisabet or any distinctly female name, nor did he keep the distinctly male "Elias". I think we should take what Eli says about his self-perception at face value - he's not a boy, not a girl, and therefore a gender-neutral name fits. Thus I think, like gattoparde, Eli would be likely to simply correct the speaker if he called him Elin.
There is also a big difference between mispronunciation (as Oskar does at first) and another name altogether (like Elin). I have plenty of experience with, mainly, native English speakers pronouncing my name with English phonetics (that is, using only standard English sounds) and not caring to correct them. I would've corrected them if they'd called me a different name altogether. In particular, I remember an instance of someone English-speaking reading my full name following the conventions of the European version of Spanish, which are foreign to me, and I appreciated the fact of her making an effort, though misguided, to get it right and didn't correct her, but again I would have if it had been a different name.

Vehn (to a Mexican)

Hmmm.... we don't really have the "v" sound...

[metoo]

[...] I don't actually believe he picked Eli because it was 'Elias' abbreviated; he picked it because it was a girl's name first, and closely related to 'Elias' second. [...]

Unfortunately Eli isn't a girl's name in Swedish. It is very uncommon, but the majority who wears the name Eli in Sweden are actually men (451 men vs 278 women, according to this site). Furthermore, it seems that many of the women might be Norwegian immigrants (as hinted by their other names). Eli is a girl's name in Norway, and much more common there as well.

[PeteMork]

Unfortunately Eli isn't a girl's name in Swedish.

http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Eli_f

[sauvin]

I have plenty of experience with, mainly, native English speakers pronouncing my name with English phonetics (that is, using only standard English sounds) and not caring to correct them. I would've corrected them if they'd called me a different name altogether.

Spanish, like most languages, have sounds that English doesn't, and many Americans can't hear them for what they are and so tend to use the American English sounds that most closely approximates them. The same would be true of me trying to speak Spanish except that some of the sounds I'd use would include French or German sounds.

Vehn (to a Mexican)

Hmmm.... we don't really have the "v" sound...

My hearing is such that I find myself often having to read lips, and it seems I have to do this more often with Spanish-speaking folk because the frequencies of many of the sounds they make are above my upper threshold. When they say my name, I don't see "Behn", I see "Vehn".

[metoo]

Unfortunately Eli isn't a girl's name in Swedish.

http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Eli_f

You found the page about the female version/use of the name. There is an additional page for the male version/use:
http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Eli_m
You may also notice that the site is German, edited by a German woman. That being said, I would think the facts nevertheless are correct.

Anyway, the numbers here seem to be the same as in the site I referred to, probably because they are based on the same official statistics. In other words, there's a male majority for Swedes being called Eli.

But numbers aside, my reaction as a native Swede to the name Eli is male.

[drakkar]

Interesting question; wonder how many of the (rather few) female Swedish Eli's being of Norwegian inheritance? Here it is a fairly common girl's name. As the German site shows.