Francisco Sepulveda - Naming

Throughout the novel Song of Solomon we see how naming plays a critical role. The novel begins with how the naming of streets differs between the locals and officials of the city. The actual name of the street on which Mercy Hospital is located is "Mains Avenue". The citizens of this town called this street Doctor Street since it was where the only colored doctor in town lived and died on. The novel continues on the same page by saying that "once more colored people moved into the area and the postal service became a popular way of sending messages between people" then the government interfered because people had to enlist into the military. Many people put that they lived on Doctor Street showing the alienation that the residents had from the other towns. The officials said that the street was "not Doctor Street" instead of helping the problem the residents continued with the name "Not Doctor Street" and named the hospital "No Mercy Hospital" All these ideas about naming shows how people prefer on going with the tradition of how they named things. All the residents of this town did not trust the written or recorded name. This idea also relates to how Milkman felt determined to find out the real name his grandfather had and did not "agree" with the name and did not go with what was the "recorded" name given from the Yankee soldier.