True Names
Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore
Multitude
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2023
⏱️ 60 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s in a name? Well, it turns out, a whole lot! We dive into the religious and folkloric origins of the True Name, the fantasy works it inspired, and how names are just as powerful now as they were in the dawn of humanity.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, animal attacks, racism, slavery, and religious persecution.
Housekeeping
- Links: Read more about names in Judaism here, here, and here!
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Listen to Tell Me About It today!
Sponsors
- BetterHelp is an online therapy service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits
- Unthinkable with Jay Acunzo, available in your podcast app now or at jayacunzo.com/unthinkable-podcast
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Transcripts are available at http://spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to http://spiritspodcast.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm |
| 0:02.0 | M. |
| 0:05.0 | The Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boosy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. |
| 0:33.5 | Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. |
| 0:36.9 | I'm Amanda. |
| 0:37.5 | And I'm Julia. |
| 0:38.6 | And this is episode 339, all about true names. |
| 0:42.3 | Inspired perhaps, Julia, by a recent episode? |
| 0:44.9 | It is indeed. |
| 0:45.9 | So in our Rumpel Stillskin episode, we talked briefly about true names, which I think has |
| 0:51.9 | kind of become a very prominent theme in the kind of current |
| 0:56.1 | fantasy novel genre, which have all kind of sort of iterated on each other and created |
| 1:02.4 | this sort of fiction that we now take as fact, which, you know, for me at least, that's |
| 1:09.3 | interesting. |
| 1:10.2 | And I like that we tend to create our |
| 1:12.5 | own worlds and our own folklore and stuff like that. But Amanda, like, what do you think of |
| 1:18.3 | when you think of true names? I think of some inherent power of cutting through illusion and |
| 1:24.5 | knowing exactly what the essence of something is. And so that might be a, |
| 1:31.1 | you know, a foe or a fairy or a helper and understanding exactly what they are and therefore |
| 1:37.0 | having some amount of power over them. It feels to me very related to things like, you know, |
| 1:41.9 | using like blood or hair or some kind of, you know, biological |
| 1:46.3 | matter to like get at the essence of something. And also maybe about chosenness and chosen names |
... |
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