She Unnames Them, Ursula K. LeGuin: Original Text
M ost of them accepted namelessness with the perfect indifference
with which they had so long accepted and ignored their names.
Whales and dolphins, seals and sea otters consented with particular grace and alacrity, sliding into
anonymity as into their element. A faction of yaks, however, protested. They said that “yak” sounded
right, and that almost everyone who knew they existed called them that. Unlike the ubiquitous creatures such as rats and fleas, who had been called by hundreds or thousands of different names since
Babel, the yaks could truly say, they said, that they had a name. They discussed the matter all summer. Read: Summary & Analysis
The councils of the elderly females finally agreed that though the name might be useful to others it was
so redundant from the yak point of view that they never spoke it themselves and hence might as well
dispense with it. After they presented the argument in this light to their bulls, a full consensus was
delayed only by the onset of s…
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