Character Names in Beloved"What's in a name? What we call a roseWith any other word it would smell the same. So Romeo, if he weren't called Romeo ,Keep that dear perfection that must without that title. Romeo, take away your name, and for your name, which is no part of you, take all of me." Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II.iiShakespeare's Juliet tells us that names are not important, indeed irrelevant. A name is simply a convenient sequence of sounds that denotes an individual, but has no meaning. But this is clearly not true. Would Romeo and Juliet be the same play if its star-crossed lovers were named Robert and Jennifer? Obviously not. Characters' names serve to identify them as members of a certain culture and help cement their identities. A name can be an arbitrary string of sounds, but it carries much more weight than that. In Beloved, Toni Morrison demonstrates a clear understanding of this fact. His choice of character names helps to firmly establish the world of the book. Toni Morrison was born with the name Chloe Anthony Wofford. She changed her name to Toni when she entered college – traditionally, a period considered to be of great significance in a young person's life. From this we can infer that Morrison appreciates the power of a changed name to confer a new identity. There are two characters whose names change over the course of the novel: Jenny Whitlow becomes Baby Suggs and Joshua becomes Stamp Paid. In both cases, the character abandons the name under which he lived as a slave for a new and free name. Whitlow is the last name of Jenny's original master (142), and we learn that she is named Baby Suggs because her husband called her Baby. How she is known by those closest to her is more important than what the white community wants to call her. The name Sethe is also interesting. This name could be interpreted as a female version of the Hebrew name Seth, used in the fourth and fifth chapters of Genesis as the name of the third son of Adam and Eve, after Cain and Abel.