In wildness is your name.

The names of men are meaningless. I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me.

Some travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.

We have a wild savage in us. So every man has an original wild name. An Indian retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. Our true names are nicknames.

A familiar name does not adhere to a man when in anger or aroused by any passion or inspiration. At such a time a man’s kin will confer his own wild title.

H.D. Thoreau, Walking (1861)