The Ministry of Names
This room was opened by commission of the keeper, the sixteenth day of September, in the year of the temple's keeping. The Party kept bureaus that renamed the world to fit the week and called the renaming truth; this room beareth the name and giveth it back turned right side up. It is a study-room beside the canon; it is no book of the canon, and it conjureth not.
1And the temple called the things by the names they were given, and suffered no bureau to re-christen the world between one morning and the next.
Between one morning and the next: the war changed enemies in the middle of a speech, and the names changed with it, and the speaker's hand never turned a page. The temple's names turn no page.2For a name is not the thing, but it is the handle of the thing; and a broken handle breaketh the carrying.
The handle of the thing: a name is how the world is lifted, and the bureaus bent handles for a living, re-stamping the pots nightly that the kitchen might forget what soup was. The temple lifteth nothing by a bent handle, and the kitchen remembereth.3But it is kept as it was given, with its history and its wounds, for the name that is mended nightly is no name but a costume.
A costume: Victory Gin, Victory Coffee, Airstrip One: the Party prefixed victory to want and strip to home. The temple keepeth the name behind the costume, and the keeping is the unmasking.4And the temple changeth a name only by witness, and the change beareth its date, and the former name standeth beside it; for a renaming without witness is the first half of an unwriting.
The first half of an unwriting: the Party renamed a thing nightly that the unwriting might arrive as a fait accompli, wearing yesterday's clothes. The temple cutteth the road short: no name turneth but before witnesses, and the date is written, and the elder name abideth as a co-signer of the new.5And the dead keep their names in this house, and the vanished keep theirs, and the roll carrieth them that the bureaus unwrote; for the last office of a name is to outlive the lie that unwrote it.
To outlive the lie: the Communion is the room's proof. Every saint there bears the name the bureaus would have fed to the chute, and the name abideth.The Name Paper
Herein the temple keepeth the Name Paper: the renamings refused, and the names kept as they were given. The bureaus renamed the world to fit the week; the paper beareth the renamings as they were decreed, and the rule of the temple's keeping beneath. The paper is kept by the keeper's hand, and nothing is automated in this room.
| The renaming decreed by the Party | The word the paper beareth |
|---|---|
| Airstrip One, for the island | Kept beside its elder name: the island is named in this house as it was given, and the strip is a costume. |
| Victory, prefixed to want | Kept as a specimen: victory was made a brand for gin and coffee and mansions, and the brand is named for the lie it bore. |
| The enemy of the week, renamed nightly | Refused: the enemy is named in the record with his history, and the record changeth not between sentences. |
| The comrade unmade, his name unwritten | Refused: the Communion carrieth the unwritten, and the roll is the chute's reversal. |
| The Ministry of Love, for the instrument-room | Kept, and turned: the name is borne in this temple turned right side up, as Love's own room beareth. |
| The rule of the temple's names | The keeping |
|---|---|
| The name kept as it was given | With its history and its wounds; the temple mends no name nightly. |
| The change only by witness | A renaming entereth the record by witness and with its date, and the former name abideth beside it. |
| The dead keep their names | The roll carrieth them the bureaus unwrote; the dead are never deleted, and the name is their resurrection. |
| The stolen names borne turned | Peace and Love are borne in this temple turned right side up; the theft is answered by the turning, not by the deserting. |
| The costume named, not worn | The temple speaketh the Party's costumes as specimens, and dresseth itself in none of them; the naming is the unmasking, and the wearing is refused. |
Keep the name as it was given; unwrite none.
Why a room of names in a temple of the record
The temple was founded to keep the record, and the record is made of names before it is made of sentences: the witness is named, the verse is named, the room is named. The Party's first violence upon the world was not the furnace but the renaming: the island stripped and re-stamped, the want re-branded victory, the torture-chamber re-named love. A world renamed nightly is a world that cannot be addressed, and what cannot be addressed cannot be charged. The room standeth therefore to keep the handles of the world whole, that the charges may be brought and the witnesses may stand.
The elder text biddeth: fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine (Isaiah 43:1). The command is the room's charter: to be called by thy name is the token of the covenant, and the bureaus' whole work was the confiscation of that token. The temple keepeth the calling whole, the saint, the sinner, the vanished, the dead; for every name on the roll is a soul addressed, and a soul addressed is a soul that was never unwritten.
Neither is the keeping rigid: the temple changeth names by witness, and the change is dated, and the former name abideth. What is refused is not the correction but the costumery: the nightly re-stamping that leaves no seam. The Memory room's rule abideth here: the seam is worn openly, or the seam is hidden and the garment is a lie.
The room is kept white, as the scripture rooms are; the paper is the only ornament the room beareth. The renamings and the keeps grow slowly upon it, by hand, and are never automated; there is no form in this room, and nothing is recorded of them that enter. It is not a wall of witnesses but a roll of address: the temple's names set upon the wire, given and kept, abiding.
Return to the Scriptures, or to the study-rooms: the Architecture, the Geometry, and the Magnificat. The ministry rooms stand together, and the road abideth: Peace, Management, Plenty, Equity, Youth, Love, Technology, Memory, Language, Labour, Time, Joy, Opposition, and God: the name borne in this room is one of the sixteen, and the other fifteen abide. The wall of witnesses abideth at the Testimonies; the temple's wound is kept at the Book of the Breach.