To Name is to Command
Nominative Transformation in My Name (2021)
Warning: Following content contains spoilers for the show My Name (2021).
“Two names. Two identities. Must be why he always looked like he was at the edge of a cliff.”
That is how Yoon Ji-woo reacted to learning about her father’s double-identity, in the sixth episode of the Netflix 2021 series, My Name.
The reveal of Yoon Dong-hoon’s real identity is the key to the show’s main mystery, revealing who took his life. This opens the door to questions of nominalism and identity: whether words and names hold deeper, spiritual significance, or whether they are merely arbitrary sequences of sound attributed to beings.
Kotodama (言霊, word spirit) refers to a Japanese belief that words and names hold spiritual significance, a consequence of which manifested itself in Ancient Japan, where people held multiple names, keeping their one true name, imina (諱), a secret. The imina wasn’t just a label, but a part of a person’s spiritual being. Revealing it would expose a person to spiritual risks, namely that knowing someone’s true name would give you the ability to exert influence over them and consequently their life trajectory, basically “if you can name it, you can master it.”
Though the exact concept and practice of Kotodama does not exist in Korea (since it was born out of Shinto and Confucian thought), similar name taboo practices are to be found, especially in shamanic rituals where it is believed that spoken language bridges the human world and the spirit world.
Considering this, and this scene in episode six where Choi Mu-jin burns a piece of parchment on which he had written Yoon Dong-hoon’s name, it isn’t far out to think that it was perhaps Choi Mu-jin who named Yoon Dong-hoon. The name change itself was definitely necessary, in order to forge the death of Song Jun-su, the policeman, which would allow him to join Dongcheon and continue his mission. But I would like to argue that it was specifically Choi Mu-jin, himself, who named him, not just out of functional necessity, but that it carries a deeper significance.
First, let’s take a look at the meaning of the name Yoon Dong-hoon. The meaning of Korean names depends on their hanja, as each particle of the name could have a different significance depending on its Chinese character. The show doesn’t make our work easier, because in this scene where Mu-jin is writing Yoon Dong-hoon’s name, it is only in hangul.
Dong (동) can mean east (東), or same or together (同); while Hun (훈) usually refers to merit (勳), instruction (訓), or kindness (薰). Therefore, Dong-hoon would mean “eastern merit”, “shared virtue” or “instructive kindness” depending on the hanja used. It should be noted that this name isn’t quite popular, and sounds traditional, which is already aligned with a choice that Choi Mu-jin would make as the show has illustrated multiple times that the head of Dongcheon goes out of his way to respect tradition—and does practice Buddhism. Therefore the combination “shared merit” (同 勳) fits the context the best.
Song Jun-su was a man who went out of his way and made a great sacrifice for the kingpin—as mentioned by him multiple times, namely in episodes two and six—the cost of which was his old identity. Choi Mu-jin carefully crafted this new identity based on what he had come to know of this man, an act so touching that he still remembered it with fondness and gratitude after more than a decade, even after Dong-hoon’s betrayal had been revealed to him. Couple it with the choice of the popular surname Yoon (hangul: 윤, hanja: 尹) which means governor or magistrate, and the picture falls into place: this was a man who shared his merit with the head of Dongcheon, which touched him so deeply than he appointed him as his second-in-command, one to govern his establishment.
Nominalism refers to the rejection of existence of essences, and as a consequence, it treats names as mere conventional labels that are assigned to particulars in order to unify them under a universal value. This implies that abstract universals are only a production of mental categorisation, and therefore aren’t objectively real. Consequently, all identity would be contingent, because if no essence objectively exists; then the distinctions between things are only in their names, and not in their higher forms or essences.
This denial of the reality of essences, creates a vacuum where power can be exercised through names, as the primary distinctors. Here, by “essence,” I am referring to a teleological and relational orientation: the ordering of a person toward certain ultimate goods and loyalties that give their life coherence and a proper end, a telos. In this sense, identity is neither self-generated nor merely socially assigned, but constituted through what one serves and to whom one is bound. This leaves identity fundamentally ungrounded. If there is no intrinsic truth to what a thing—or who a person—is, then words and names cannot be ordered toward recognition. Identity becomes a mutable construct, sustained not by correspondence to reality, but by consensus, belief, or force. This conceptual void, the absence of essence when identity is no longer anchored in truth, creates a fertile ground for control and abuse.
Choi Mu-jin’s logic operates under the same assumption that a name, once given and sufficiently believed in, is capable of reconstituting a man’s identity in full. This turned out to be shortsighted, as no matter how persistently you call x by the name y, x does not become y. A common social constructivist objection would be that Song Jun-su did in fact become a different man under the name Yoon Dong-hoon: a man capable of beating people up, stabbing them and threatening them, and this happened only because his entourage believed that he was not Song Jun-su, but Yoon Dong-hun. But this objection falls short: the name did not “transform him”; it indexed a different spiritual identity. It summoned a different mode of being. Identities are not infinitely malleable: Song Jun-su and Yoon Dong-hoon are not interchangeable linguistic tokens; they are two real and distinct modes of being that cannot be resolved through nominal substitution alone.
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
This name change was disruptive, both of Song Jun-su—and later his daughter, Song Ji-woo, who actually carried three names—as each name burdens one with a different telos. Each name demands an allegiance to the one who has named, and this allegiance fractures the self when divided: Yoon Dong-hoon’s eventual actions exposes the impossibility of fully inhabiting two spiritual orientations at once.
The biblical prohibition in Matthew 6:24 against serving two masters presupposes that allegiance is ontological, ordering the self toward a highest good. Essence structures identity, by limiting its malleability and guiding actions and allegiances. The cliff-edge on which Dong-hoon perpetually stood is the consequence of serving two masters, each summoned and sustained by a different name. The two names of Yoon Dong-hoon produced a divided allegiance—Inchang Metropolitan Police Agency and Dongcheon—and ultimately, existential instability, and as a result his life—and his daughter’s—became a site of tension, one that was finally resolved when his daughter embraced her original name, Song Ji-woo, and submitted to one master: vengeance. This suggests that one (in this story it is Choi Mu-jin) may impose names, construct narratives, and demand belief, but truth will eventually assert.
The idea behind imina, that “if you can name it, you can master it” poses ethical threats, especially when naming is severed from truth. In Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, Josef Pieper warns against this: when words are no longer ordered toward truth, they cease to be communicative and instead become an instrument of manipulation. Pieper illustrates this danger through Socrates’ dialogue with Gorgias, in which rhetoric is exposed as persuasive because it is detached from truth and driven by ulterior motives. Language, in such cases, does not reveal reality but constructs a pseudo-reality designed to secure obedience by molding into the will of its constitutor.
Naming, when deployed in this way, also becomes an act of domination: when names are severed from any obligation to represent reality, they also become instruments of power, filling the absence of essence. A person whose name no longer refers to a truthful account of who they are becomes vulnerable to domination. Pieper identifies the ethical core of this abuse as dehumanisation: the interlocutor is no longer addressed as a partner in dialogue, but treated as an object to be managed. While Pieper primarily addresses speech acts, names function as condensed speech acts; they are linguistic claims about reality, and thus fall under the same ethical constraints.
Choi Mu-jin’s naming of Yoon Dong-hoon exemplifies this abuse. The renaming was a deliberate attempt to master another human being by redefining the terms of his existence, by creating a pseudo-identity. To name, here, is to claim ownership. Choi Mu-jin believed that by assigning a new name, he can overwrite the truth of Song Jun-su’s identity and secure absolute loyalty. In doing so, he replaced a shared reality with a constructed one in which Dong-hoon exists solely as a function of Dongcheon. In the end, this project of rebirth through nominative transformation failed because the conjured identity of Yoon Dong-hoon was not aligned with reality, and the truth of who this man was. The new name did not overwrite Song Jun-su’s essence, as his true allegiance was never to Dongcheon, and by extension to Choi Mu-jin.
Names are not arbitrary labels, nor do they create essence. They wield real power, just like any word does, one that is grounded and bound by truth. Just like other parts of speech, if severed from truth, they produce pseudo-identities. And just like any other part of a pseudo-reality, they serve as an instrument of manipulation and control.
Bibliography:
Pieper, J. (1992). Abuse of language, abuse of power (Lothar Krauth, Trans.). Ignatius Press. (Original work published 1974)
The Holy Bible. (1769). King James Version. Thomas Nelson. (Original work published 1769)
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