The association of a name to a person is itself an interesting concept. A name is actually a metaphor (admittedly with a wider application of this term than usual) for a person intended to present an assertion of differential identity across a social ecosystem. It is, of course, not necessarily unique. In a large social ecosystem, there are actually lots of people with identical names. So, if one goes outside of the context within which their name is fairly well defined, it is likely that much of the context specific information associated with the name will not convey. Of course, in small groups that exist over a long period of time, a name becomes associated with the physical and social characteristics of an individual person. Within a social group, such as within the domain of the school, it can become well established that Sally Green is the tall (for her age), red haired girl with freckles that is in the third grade. Moreover, Sally Green is good at math, poor at social studies and likes to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Now, we have greatly expanded the metaphor suggested by the name. This expansion we call a persona. Another way to characterize a persona is to view it as a subset of a person’s total experiential identity. We suggest the term anchored persona to indicate this most intimate association of a person’s differential identity with their total experiential identity. Of course, it is also useful to be able to establish a subset of experiential identity that can be used to establish an identity-related context. Thus, within social ecosystems one might project the persona of a mother or father, of an employee of a company, of a good athlete and so on. We suggest the term floating persona in such cases. An interesting application of a floating persona is the establishment of discrete information contexts for a person as a means of achieving privacy. An unfortunate application of the concept of persona may occur when someone else seeks to define a persona for another person. This is the way that stereotypes are formed and hence of preferential or prejudicial application of policy based on the stereotype persona rather than on the specific experiential identity of the person.

A persona to be presented by a person is a matter of choice by the person. This is simply a restatement of the concept of privacy as meaning control of information. A name, as an assertion of a persona, is a matter of choice as well. This is a central reason why a name is a very poor marker for differential identity. The name presented by a person can change, in many cases seemingly on a whim. Within the United States, the prevailing social orders typically place few limits on a person’s changing their name. In fact, during the course of their lives, most people present a variety of names. Sometimes the change is merely emphasis of a middle name that is preferred to the first name. Sometimes the change adopts a nickname as preferable to a given name. Women may take the last name of their husband when they marry. In some cases the last names of husband and wife may be combined, forming a hyphenated name. In certain contexts, for example in Internet chat rooms, people may present themselves through a handle; a more illustrative means of indicating a persona. From the virtually official city logo of the city of Las Vegas, Nevada that says, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!” we discern that in some cases a persona is intended to be completely arbitrary and thus effectively disjoint from the experiential identity of the person in question. We suggest the term situational persona for this particular application.

To explore the concept of persona in just a bit more depth, let’s return to the identity registry that we established when we counted the students in our example school. A rather standard feature of schools is the offering of some level of health insurance for the students. If a particular student’s parents pay for the insurance, a record of that fact is maintained at the school. Perhaps during the morning recess period, Sally Green is struck in the head by a hard ball thrown by a classmate. Seeing a large bump on Sally’s head, and fearing the possibility of a concussion, the teacher calls an ambulance and Sally is taken to the hospital. At the hospital, as part of the registration procedure, Sally’s student identification number is taken down. This number is just the counting index that we saw associated with Sally’s name at school. Of course, it is now a very useful number

Book available at Midori Press (regular)
Book available at Midori Press (signed)
Book available at Amazon (regular)