Sign names.
Tricky little blighters, aren’t they? It’s all well and good if your given sign name is something delicious and intriguing; ‘cute’, ‘flower’, ‘eye candy’, or ‘muscles’ for example. It’s also fine and dandy when your sign name captures a pretty unique part of your personality; such as ‘sausage’, ‘sunshine’, ‘dinosaur’, ‘why’, ‘dreamer’…
All of the above are sign names given to friends of mine, and they’re all perfectly happy with them. As we all know, you don’t choose your sign name; you wait to be given it. Oh, you can try and choose one for yourself, a lovely, flattering illustration of the finer points of your character, but chances are it’ll be swept aside by something one of your Deafie friends decides is ‘much more you’. Like ‘boobies’ or ‘dribble’, or ‘peanut’.
My own sign name is a peculiar one, having evolved into various mutations of the original ‘wolf’ hand shape, currently somewhere between ‘fox’, ‘roulette’ and ‘orange’ depending on who you ask. Which is always tricky to explain, but at least it breaks the ice.
Our very own editor, Charlie, has previously discussed the minefield that is sign names, and I’m quite sure there have been many, many conversations, debates and outright arguments about them over the years. So, why am I revisiting old ground? Well, I don’t mean to, but it got me thinking; do hearing people have invisible sign names?
The general point of a sign name is to make it easier and quicker to refer to someone in a signed conversation. Hearing people don’t need them; they can just say the person’s name. But a sign name also describes a person in a much more intimate way than their mere birth name can. Hearing people were given their names when they were very small, with hardly any personality to speak of beyond vomiting and shrieking; how can it possible relate to that name on a deeper level? Pfft.
I have a friend who is hearing and doesn’t sign at all. She has her rubbish birth name, of course, but when I think of her, she is called ‘To be honest…’ because that is pretty much her opening gambit for every single sentence she utters. Then I have another friend, bless his socks, who always, always finishes any laughing fit with a small ‘hmmm’. In my head, he is called ‘Hmmm’, not Neil. If they were Deafies, they would have sign names reflecting these instantly recognisable traits. She would be ‘honest’, with the crossing of the heart sign, and he would be… He’d have to be a hand vibrating in front of his chest or something. Purrrrrr.
So, dear Reader, this is my question to you; do you inadvertently give hearing people their own sign names? Do you let them know, or is it a secret? And I’m not talking about the guy in the Audi who cut you up on the M1 last week; we all know what that sign name is and it’s not exclusive to him, either… But are hearingies even allowed to have a sign name, whether they know they have it or not?
Is it a Deaf cultural thing that we should be keeping private and safe, or can we share it and give absolutely everyone in the world their own individual and unique sign name? I can think of a few celebrity ones already; George Bush, Jordan, Ryan Giggs…. Actually theirs probably wouldn’t be very individual and unique…
Do let me know your thoughts; I am, after all, only an orange fox with a gambling habit, and I need guidance before I decide whether or not to inform my neighbour her name is not actually Debbie, it’s ‘banana’.
Emily Howlett is a profoundly Deaf actress, writer and horsewoman. She describes herself as being “equally fluent in English, BSL and Gibberish, and completely rubbish at French.” Emily can be found all over the place on various escapades, but divides her time between Derby and London. She can often be found behind a large packet of crisps or any halfway decent book, and insists she can still play characters in their early twenties despite having a grey eyebrow hair.
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Reload
May 4, 2012
The Deaf children I used to teach gave me a sign name which was basically rubbing under the nose with one finger, because apparently I did that alot. Not the most flattering (or hygienic) and still smile to myself when I catch myself doing it! Could have been much worse I suppose :0)
Michele Taylor Coach
May 4, 2012
As a hearing person, I’d be intrigued to know if I have a secret sign name – but then it wouldn’t be secret anymore, would it? Interesting to read your post and realise that I definitely have people in my life to whom I attach a phrase, a gesture, a noise in my head whenever I think of them. Not a sign name at all, but captures something of the essence of what that person means to me….
Fiona
May 4, 2012
Hey!
I am a hearing individual with a partially dead partner. We have assigned sign names to most of our friends both with and without their knowledge. My sign name is wuff (wolf) as I have played a wolf character for many years. My partners is “dopey ‘lope” as she likes jackalopes. As there is no proper sign for jackalope, she made her own up which is similar to the sign for deer (I think),
Amongst our mostly hearing circle of friends (all who are trying to learn sign) we use the sign names as means of talking about people without their knowledge.
Fiona
May 4, 2012
Crap autocorrect… My partner is not partially dead. >.< partially deaf is what it should have said
Editor
May 4, 2012
We are sorry for your (partial) loss 😉
'Masey Moomin
May 4, 2012
My sign name has evolved from WHEELS… as I used to be a wheelchair user…. then to WALKINGSTICKS as I was then on two sticks… and now its more of a dodgy classifer to show a big LIMP!! That one’s only ever done when I’m not in the conversation though – that’s my ‘secret’ sign name…
The one they use to my face is usually KISS-ON-CHEEK as I have a habit and kissing and hugging everyone when I see them lol. There’s a few people I know who have one sign name ‘for’ them and one sign name ‘about’ the person… depending on if there person is actually here in person or not depends on which name gets used!!
I think sign names are far more personal than birth names and, as Emily said, they suit character 😮 )
MargaretB
May 4, 2012
The equivalent to a sign name between hearing people is surely giving someone a nickname. As a hearing person I was introduced to sign names when I started learning BSL and I think it is a beautiful and special feature of Deaf culture. I have deaf friends who first gave me the sign name ‘Mlady’ which later changed to ‘Mbook’ – I’m a journalist – and it’s great. A nickname for a hearing person can be quite derogatory so it would be nice if deaf people did share and encourage giving sign names through the hearing community. After all, it’s all part of the bigger picture – communication between deaf and hearing people.
Lisa Cici Fallenstar Heenan
May 4, 2012
I am a hearing parent of 3 kids, 2 of whom are deaf but was given my sign name by a friends son who is also deaf. They had come to our house for fireworks one year and as he looked into our garden he said to me ‘do you like flowers?’ Of course I said yes! He gave me my sign name there and then and I am so happy and proud to be known as ‘flower’ <3 my special, personal and lovely sign name and the person who gave it to me x
Andy
May 4, 2012
I’m hearing.. Deaf kids would ask for me in the staffroom by holding their thumb upto their mouth (I always get caught biting my fingers/thumbs) – My hearing friends gave me the name “Ted” even though I’m named Andy – Ted as in always throwing the teddy out of the cot due to my little tantrums lol
Tom Edwards
May 4, 2012
Mine sign name was given to me at Uni. It’s basically due to my faux-hawk hair. It’s always stuck at that even eggnog I shaved my head and when I grew my hair too…
The cool thing about my name is that it also means fireman, roman, warrior, Trojan and spartan!
THIS IS NOT MADNESS.
THIS
IS
SPARTA!
Kim W-T
May 4, 2012
I found this interesting – I wonder if giving ‘sign name’ to people is an innate behaviour of deaf people, especially children – we don’t always get the names of people when we are introduced the first time around (and most especially in a large group) so we automatically create a picture of each person we had met in our mind of their physical characters or habits. When I was very young, before I had heard of sign names, my dad used to take me to the pub alot and I used to sit quietly in the corner observing people and afterwards at home, I would ask my dad about the people I saw in the pub. I gave each of them a small description of their character or appearance so my dad could work out who I was talking about…’that man with the big shoulders’, ‘theman with the Doctor Who scarf’, ‘the man with the ponytail’, ‘that man with the big teeth’ and so on. My father told his hearing friends about this (much to my embarrassment)…but they started calling each other by the names I described of them: ‘Dave and Shoulders’, ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Pony’, ‘Beaver’ etc…..and to this day, after 35 years…my father still talked about them this way and they still called each other their ‘nick/sign names’ that I invented for them.
Adrienne Gravish (@AquafarE)
May 4, 2012
I’m in the States so I use ASL. As a teenager, I was given the name sign based on the twists I wore in my hair that fell over my forehead. Since I no longer have that hairstyle & have not worn it in years as an adult, I’m waiting for other Deafies to give me a new name sign.
In college, I had the most passive aggressive encounter with a racist schoolmate who sat my table to tell me that he agreed with a particular book that was on the NYTimes Bestseller List that argued that Black people are not intelligent and are stupider than White people. (I shall not mention the book’s name and increase its sales). I responded by asking him why then if he is White and I am Black my GPA was higher than his. He proceeded to ask my Jewish boyfriend about the strange foods his people eats, such as “this round thing with the hole in the middle”.
Annoyed, I said ” You don’t know what a donut is?!? ” My boyfriend almost choked on his food due to laughter.
(I knew he was hinting about bagels being served at the school’s Hillel house and the events hosted by the Jewish people we personally knew.)
Many people disliked him because he liked to show up and make racist and Anti-Semitic comments & jokes.
Someone asked me about the incident, to which I replied outloud & signed, “You mean Donut Boy?”
The name stuck.
Whenever he was coming, even hearing school mates would sign “Donut Boy” as a warning for the b.s. that was to come out of his mouth soon.
Dianrez
May 5, 2012
This brought back memories. Although my school enforced the fingerspelling only policy in my day, we still had secret sign names for some staffers. Not very flattering ones: Tongue-rolling, Thumb-nose-blow, Rub-girdle, Crack-jaw, Prissy-posture. I’m sure anyone who recognizes these would instantly identify my school and time!
Aaron
May 6, 2012
great article! not sure how different BSL is from ASL, but would love to meet some other deafies next time I’m working in London. I didn’t get to meet any on my last two trips, so that sucked…
Emily Howlett
May 8, 2012
I am loving all these comments!
(Although I was a bit concerned about the ‘partially dead’ partner, until I read the following amendment!)
As for teachers being given sign names; I went to mainstream school but practically the whole class still had a sign name for our maths teacher – ‘coffee monster’ – and he spent five years in blissful ignorance thinking we all did a funny kind of bow every time he entered the room. Still, some might say it serves him right for teaching us maths in the first place…
Everybody who is commenting seems to like their sign names, which is great. Makes me wonder if our dear Ed is the only one who ever had a derogatory one (albeit temporary)…