The Linguistic Mix of Names in Lll

The names in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost present a delightful linguistic mix. The names of major characters are Anglicized names of actual French nobles, which emphasizes the thematic parallelism of historical and fictive events. Other names broaden the international landscape, including Nathaniel, a biblical association, Forester (which is French as well as English), and Armado, a Spanish tag. The length of this paper does not allow room to describe many names in detail. However, the cross-cultural puns make this play especially interesting; e.g., Moth has at least two meanings in English, but pronounced mot in French means ‘word,’ ‘remark,’ ‘cue,’ or ‘answer to a riddle’ – which points most clearly to a thematic meaning. A full analysis of this play will appear soon in my book Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies (Vernon Press).