On Spell-Names and Other Sensible Lies

Anyone may call himself a wizard. This is one of the hazards of literacy.

A person who has learned three charms, purchased a blue robe, and frightened a chicken can become Magister Storm-Eye before supper. No council will stop him. No god will intervene. If the chicken survives, it may even confirm his reputation.

This is as it should be.

Among practitioners of the arcane arts, the adopted magical identity is called a nom de arcana. In ordinary Anglish, it is a spell-name. The custom is often dismissed as vanity by people whose names have never been used to draw a summoning circle.

Names matter. A birth name may carry family, ancestry, affection, obligation, and the unfortunate confidence of everyone who shouted it while you were young enough to answer automatically. Such a name should not be handed to a summoned intelligence, a rival thaumaturge, or a spirit that has spent six centuries searching for a syllable by which to enter your dreams.

A spell-name is a locked door built in public. It gives the world something to knock upon without showing what lives behind it.

The forms vary. Some practitioners invent a name with no prior history. Some take the name of a weapon, substance, star, beast, color, or impossible place. The restrained choose a single severe word. The ambitious add a mystery. The insecure add a number. The truly dangerous add nothing at all and allow other people to lengthen the name on their behalf.

Apprentices frequently make mistakes. They choose names they cannot pronounce while frightened. They claim powers they do not possess. They attach “the Eternal” to themselves before surviving a winter. Worst of all, they choose a name that sounds magnificent when announced across a candlelit chamber but ridiculous when requested by an innkeeper holding a chalkboard and asking who ordered the onions.

A useful spell-name should pass four tests.

First, it must be memorable. If your enemies cannot remember your name, they cannot fear it, and if your clients cannot remember it, they cannot pay you.

Second, it must be speakable. A name requiring a diagram is a sigil, not an introduction.

Third, it must belong to no one you can reasonably expect to meet. Two Black Thorns at the same convocation will spend the evening pretending not to notice one another. By midnight, one will be dead and the other will insist the matter concerned doctrine.

Fourth, it must leave room for growth. “Ember” may become “Ember of the Western Vault.” “Keladorn” may become “Keladorn the Grey Fire.” A young magician who begins as “The Final and Unanswerable King of All Stars” has nowhere to go except apology.

As for my own name, the lantern is plain enough. A lantern does not abolish darkness. It makes a small agreement with it. The darkness may remain everywhere except here.

The thirteenth word is another matter.

No, I will not tell you what it is.

A locked door built in public remains a locked door.

— Lantern of the Thirteenth Word