The Namesake: Difference between revisions

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Suppose you go see a film called "the boat". Movie starts and it takes place as far away from a body of water as is possible. No boats. An hour can pass and you won't see a single boat. But just when you were thinking "maybe it's a [[Non-Indicative Name]]", a huge sailing vessel [[The Reveal|is revealed]] to be what everything was revolving around. Expect to hear someone in the theater go, "Oh, that's what it was!" This trope is similar to a [[Title Drop]] except that a character need not say it aloud.

A namesake is the thing within a story that the story itself is named after. It could be [[The Eponymous Show|a character]], [[The Place|a place]], an object, or indeed a metaphor. Often, the namesake is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|rather obvious]] (''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' is obviously named that way because there's a character called "Romeo" and another called "Juliet"; ''[[The Time Machine]]'' obviously includes a machine to [[Time Travel|travel through time]]) but sometimes, authors (or film studios) want to use titles that draw attention, and that's when the namesake may not appear until the end of the story, or might indeed only be a metaphor for a certain situation in the story which doesn't become clear until the end. In short, this becomes a trope when the reason why the book/movie/chapter/episode/etc. is called the way it is, isn't revealed to the audience until [[Now You Tell Me|near the end]]; regardless of whether the characters [[The Not-Secret|knew about it all along]] or not. If book/movie/chapter/episode is named after a pivotal plot point rather than an actual person/place/thing, then it's a [[Spoiler Title]].

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* ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'' has an interesting title, especially compared to the self-evident titles of the other ''[[Star Wars]]'' movies. Namely, it raises the question, who is the "phantom menace"? Darth Maul, as the [[Never Trust a Trailer|advertising campaign would suggest]]? Senator Palpatine, the [[The Chessmaster|mastermind behind it all]] who [[Devil in Plain Sight|hides behind a respectable front]]? The Sith in general, who are supposed to be extinct? Or perhaps [[Start of Darkness|Anakin]], who at this point is only a "phantom" of the "menace" he will one day become?

* In the original version of ''[[The Wicker Man]]'', the titular man of wicker isn't shown or otherwise mentioned until the very end of the movie.

* Disney's ''[[The Princess and the Frog]]'': Tiana, the film's heroine, only eventually becomes a princess by ''marriage'', and the frog is actually a prince.

== Literature ==

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== [[Web Comics]] ==

* [http://www.pantheracomic.com Panthera]: The reason for the title isn't revealed until the 19th strip, which, [[Webcomic Time|due to the comic being weekly]] and having [[Schedule Slip|missed an update]], meant that it was revealed after 6 months! Once it was, the author was quite verbal in pointing it out.

* ''[[Something Positive]]'': The title never actually appears in the strip anywhere. One of creator Randy Milholland's friends urged him to do "something positive" with his life, and the comic was the end result.

* ''[[Something*Positive]]'': The title never actually appears in the strip anywhere. One of creator Randy Milholland's friends urged him to do "something positive" with his life, and the comic was the end result.

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