{"id":43565,"date":"2025-02-08T00:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T08:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=43565"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:05:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:05:48","slug":"the-human-need-to-name-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/the-human-need-to-name-things\/","title":{"rendered":"The Human Need to Name Things — While Standing in a Patch of Weeds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
I succumbed to the human need to name things, including the colors of these fireweed blossoms, whose petals were one color, their sepals, anthers and stems another. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The Human Need to Name Things<\/strong><\/h5>\n

We can’t help ourselves, we humans. We like to name things. We need<\/em> to name things.<\/p>\n

Naming things has a long and venerable history in Western culture. God himself invited Adam to name the birds of the sky as well as the animals, wild and domestic. It’s right there at Genesis\u00a0 2:19:<\/p>\n

“<\/sup>And out of the ground the\u00a0Lord<\/span> God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof . . . ”<\/p>\n

A Tall Patch of Weeds<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It was that very human impulse — endorsed by God? — that had me standing stock-still in a patch of weeds one summer day in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n

It was a stand of fireweed, to be exact. Some of its blossoms were glowing in the bright afternoon sun. Others were flattened in the shade of the nearby Douglas firs. Depending on where I stood, the color of those petals and sepals changed and changed and changed. Were they purple? Blue? Pink?<\/p>\n

I couldn’t make up my mind. So I took photos.<\/p>\n

Back home in the Bay Area I pulled the fireweed images up on my laptop, determined to give a name to those elusive colors once and for all.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
These fireweed blossoms turned blue — purple? — in the shade of the nearby Douglas fir trees. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sure enough, I still couldn’t do it. The hues had changed minute by minute and hour by hour during my visit to the fireweed patch<\/a>, and they were doing the same now on my computer monitor.<\/p>\n

I Googled myself over to Wikipedia to see where my elusive colors might fit in on the color wheel. Along the way, I stumbled upon some promising color charts — including Goethe\u2019s eighteenth-century color wheel.<\/p>\n

Lunch With a Buddhist<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Succumbing to the human need to name things, I was about to close in on the many names for purple when I remembered it was time to meet an old friend for lunch.<\/p>\n

As I dug into my feta and spinach phyllo over at La Mediterranee in Berkeley, my friend, a Buddhist, turned the conversation to the Western mind\u2019s tendency to judge, make distinctions and assign things to categories.<\/p>\n

Our brains get so busy putting things in their place\u2014naming them, describing them\u2014she said, we forget to . . .<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The weedy fireweed plant can get tall, with flowers blooming at eye-level. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Forget to what? I can\u2019t remember what she said next. It was something pithy and useful and wise, but my mind, along with my fork, was moving from the piquant feta and spinach on one side of my plate to the cinnamony chicken Cilicia on the other.<\/p>\n

A Westerner Set Free<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Later, back at my desk I put aside my Buddhist friend’s admonitions and set my inner Westerner free.<\/p>\n

A few clicks of the mouse, and there<\/a> they were, dozens of stunning words to choose from: heliotrope, crimson, amethyst, mauve, magenta — words (words!) as luscious as the colors they named.<\/p>\n

More stories about flowers and spectacular places at “Help, I Can’t Remember the Names of My Flowers.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, “Yosemite — More Beautiful Than the Himalayas?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Later in the season, in November, gone to seed — and silver. Photo by Birte Falconer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

We can’t help ourselves. We like to name things. We have a human need to name things, including the colors of the weeds in a weed patch.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,52],"tags":[1577,272,34,1351,1470,2952,2953,2954,32,488],"class_list":["post-43565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","category-the-writing-room","tag-bible","tag-buddhism","tag-dont-miss","tag-fireweed","tag-genesis","tag-genesis-219","tag-naming-things","tag-pacific-northwest","tag-photography","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48602,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43565\/revisions\/48602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}