Ayn Rand’s Anthem: Self-Naming, Individualism, and Anonymity

Abstract

Ayn Rand’s dystopian novella Anthem is set in an unspecified future, physically and spiritually desolate, with enforced uniformity and a language bereft of all singular pronouns. Anthem, moreover, is profoundly deficient regarding onomastics in general. The society assigns personal names at birth using a fixed pattern: an abstract word, a single-digit number, a hyphen, and four additional digits. This system befits a society in which one can be condemned for committing the “Sin of Preference,” concerning professions, privacy, or partners. In a world from which most names (for cities, buildings, streets, institutions etc.) have disappeared, the system of assigned anthroponyms is not the source of a problem or the epitome of a problem, but rather, the final downward step of an increasingly nameless culture. The two main characters, in successive episodes of purposeful self-naming, subvert the discourse of the decline and thus reclaim individualism and volition.

Keywords:

• dystopia
• individualism
• speculative fiction
• anthroponyms
• literary onomastics
• Ayn Rand