Mississippi Quarterly

Faulkner scholars have long observed his fondness for choosing names, both given and surnames, that fit thematically into his works. He frequently gives his aristocratic families the Scots-Irish surnames that populated the antebellum US South. He often follows the plantation tradition of giving classical or biblical names to enslaved people. In some cases, symbolic significance is obvious (Joe Christmas in Light in August). In others lie deeply buried jokes (for example, Caroline Compson’s maiden name is Bascomb, a name which arrived in England with the Norman Conquest, as did Compson, and which Jason Senior, at least, likely knows means “a valley filled with thistles and burrs”¹). Critics have addressed such diverse aspects of Faulkner’s onomastics as consonance and alliteration (Candace/candle²), biblical allusions (Benjamin Compson, Candace Compson, Abner Snopes³), and literary sources (Jason Compson⁴). In As I Lay Dying, some of the minor characters bear names with symbolic or historical importance. Cliff Staebler explores the relationship of Vernon Tull to the historical figure of Jethro Tull, who perfected the horse-drawn seed drill and revolutionized tenant farming. Cora’s name denotes her sense that she is unloved by Addie in the resonances of Cora and coral, the stuff of inexpensive jewelry versus the true Jewel. The Bundren’s family name, as many have observed, [End Page 225] carries the sound effect of “burden,” perhaps more so after Faulkner accidentally conflated Addie Bundren with Joanna Burden in his lectures at the University of Virginia (Faulkner in the University 112). Providing further confirmation, as Tull says drily, “I done holp him so much already I cant quit now” (33). But the name also contains the German root bund (“a band,” as well as the associated “to bind,” and “bundle”) and reminds us that Addie is the knot that keeps them tied together (OED II, 665). In the case of the five Bundren children, one might ask if their given names were chosen by Faulkner because they might reasonably have been bestowed by parents in that era, place, and socioeconomic bracket, or if they were assigned by Faulkner for reasons of his own. Perhaps both explanations are possible. I would argue that Faulkner chooses the family’s names very carefully, for purposes that are often darkly ironic, but which also point to subterranean alliances within the family unit.