The Naming of Things

I remember one night at swim practice when I was in, I don't know, sixth grade, there was a girl in my lane who was usually quite reticent, but tonight she kept repeating the line "The naming of cats is a difficult matter; it's enough to make you go mad as a hatter!"

What a weird rhyme. But it would be hard to name cats, wouldn't it? (That's why Poster Nutbag is so great.) But not as hard as naming a story.

A perfect title sets the tone of something while also drawing attention to one or some of the themes in the piece; it sets itself apart by being outside the story, separate from, but still privy to the story's inner secrets. It is the reader's entranceway and can also have the final word, if it is summational enough. It should also sound interesting.

I am hopeless at coming up with good titles. All of my titles, for anything I make, are mundane and worthless and probably deter people from entering any further into my work. Apropos: the three stories I've had published are called "Joel & Heather," "Piano Lessons," and "The Experiment." Boring! Three of David Foster Wallace's stories are called "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," "Incarnations of Burned Children," and "Church Not Made By Men."

(That said, I know tend toward long, involved titles for many things, my favorite album titles being Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Creek Drank the Cradle, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Spirit They've Gone Spirit They've Vanished, So Much Crowding So Much Laughter...I could go on.)

Today I was trying to name a story I wrote a few months ago that no one else seems to think is anything special but I happen to love. I've called it, alternately, "If that's what it takes" and "Receiving Line," both of which are stupid and I hate.

Here is a list I made of possible titles for it:

'‘Someone Strummed a Banjo’
‘Aunt Harriet Rescinds her Threat’
‘Coxswain!’
‘And She Never Looked Back’
‘Miranda Somehow Benefited’
‘Looking for Inner Peace, Anny Makes a Break for It’
‘Weeping J.J.’
‘This Would Have Been a Huge Wedding'
‘Conflicted Anny’

I like that a list of potential titles can set the story's tone, and, if expanded and done right, could even be a story itself. But that is for another time.