Wooden Name Tags

A BIT OF FUN WITH WOODEN NAME TAG HISTORY

The history of wooden name tags is elusive. Because we love to make wooden name tags, Cheryl and I have explored and investigated the history of wooden name tags and present the following:

The first name tags were used before this Universe even existed. In another Universe, in another dimension, Gods and Robots were sitting in a room without walls or a ceiling or a floor and were arranging name tags that hung suspended.

The process was that the Gods would sit and sip some sort of sweet nectar from invisible cups while giggling and directing the Robots to make calculations, to move name tag icons to other places, to add a comet here, a star there, a moon or two somewhere else, and of course dark matter and an occasional black hole. This process lasted for longer than a human-being can imagine. Eons. The little wooden name tag that represented our planet earth looked like this.

At some point, an alarm started sounding and the room with no walls received walls and a floor and a ceiling, and the Gods and the Robots quickly left the room. There was an immense explosion. The sound was very loud. The Gods laughed and floated away to another room without walls with the Robots following them.

Billions of earth years later, long forgotten by the laughing Gods, the little planet earth was beginning to cool off. Water was in the oceans and creatures had started living there. Occasionally, one of the creatures would flop to shore and bask in the sun for a while...and then it would die.

After trying for millions of years, the ocean creatures managed to establish a stronghold on the dry part of Planet Earth. Some of the creatures were very large and slow and huge and clumsy. One day one of these creatures fell into a hole and impaled his chest with a sharp stick. After climbing back out of the hole he went to the lake to rinse off. The stick would not come out. After looking at the stick in the reflecting lake water the dinosaur saw the word "KNAH" on the stick. Just a fluke. One of those things that happens just once or twice in eternity. Wierd.

The other dinosaurs looked at the stick and started trying to pronounce "Hank". Their words came out a bit strange, but after a while, all of the dinosaurs were walking around mumbling Hank’s name. Hank became famous. The first wooden name tag on Planet Earth had been attached.

Hank stayed famous for about 23 years until one day his body finally rejected the stick that had been in his chest. It fell to the ground and Hank stepped on it and broke it. Despondent and now ridiculed by the other dinosaurs, Hank died at the edge of the swamp just 2 years later...his hair splotchy and his teeth and liver and kidneys gone as the result of his recent addiction to hot swamp water.

And then Adam came along, and shortly thereafter Eve arrived. Eve just didn't seem to get it. She shied away from Adam...avoiding him. One day Adam carved a wood name tag for himself and fastened it to his loin cloth. Eve seemed to be fascinated by it. She would look at it...and stare at it...and sometimes kneel down and touch it. Humans began to multiply and go forth.

No history would be complete without Noah. From what we could learn, Noah was commanded to load a boat and bring two of all of the animals aboard with him. As you can imagine this turned out to be quite a chore. And as time was running out, things became chaotic. Noah's Ark almost left without Noah.

Noah had assigned a Tiger and a Lion to check everyone boarding for I.D. Noah left his ship in a hurry to pay the Harbor master his docking fee, and when he got back to the ship the absent minded Tiger asked him for I.D.! Noah had left his name tag in his stateroom on his other shirt! Fortunately, a busy-body pack rat realized what was going on and rushed off to Noah's stateroom and returned with Noah's wooden name tag.  Noah re-boarded the Ark and safely navigated through the flood.

As humans were developing, the strong humans survived. The strongest humans wore wooden name tags similar to this one. They learned that when wearing a name tag that others tended to accept them a bit more easily, it was easier to communicate, and it was easier to get food.

The strongest became Kings and, of course, they kept their name tags, sometimes embellishing them with jewels and gold and pearls and hummingbird feathers. We were not able to locate an embellished name tag but did find this one in a museum in Egypt.

As humans tend to do, they mimic those with more. For example this humble olive oil merchant saw that his King had a name tag and so wanted one for himself. This name tag has been carved from the wood of an olive tree and dates back to about 2,000 BC. Locked up in a display case in a museum in Spain, I was able to bribe a guard to remove it so that I could photograph it.

There were many chariots in use for a while. While we normally think of chariots as machines of war, we must remember that they were also used as a form of ‘taxi cab’. This is just one of many name tags that is on display in the Yellow Cab Museum in New York City. It dates back to about 1,300 BC. Note that even then the cab drivers needed to wear armor of sorts.

During the time of Jesus Christ there was a humble carpenter who made homes and name tags. He also made a name tag for himself, which can be found in a museum in Jerusalem. This name tag is mysterious in that it has no apparent method of attachment, and yet it is recorded that this carpenter commonly wore his wood name tag during the period of 18 AD through 23.5 AD.

The Vikings sailed all over the oceans of the Planet Earth. In order to sail as far as they sailed, they needed sustenance and this meant that they needed good cooks. On the Viking sailing ships, the Head Cook was the most befriended person aboard. It is rumored that if the cook didn’t like you, he would use you for bait. This name tag belonged to a cook named Saxolb who regularly sailed aboard the Norse Sailing Vessel ‘Oklanti’. Because the Vikings bathed once a week on Saturdays, this name tag is relatively clean.

Grog, a liquid enjoyed in all parts of the world, can be even more pleasurable when served by a delightful wench. Competition between delightful wenches was at times extraordinarily fierce with the winner usually being determined by the quality of the wench’s wooden name tag. This name tag resides in the jewelry box of an Italian matron, having been passed forward for centuries with the admonition that it should not be viewed in the light of the sun.

As we come further ahead in history, it is seen that name tags have been adopted even more frequently…most likely because they could be produced using machines.

Steam power developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 1600s, to useful pumps for mining in 1700, and then to James Watt’s improved designs in the late 1700’s.

In 1821, Michael Faraday invented the electric motor. A very intense person who established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics, Michael was also instrumental with inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices. Michael found that he intimidated many people with his drive and energy…so used the informal name of “Mike” on his name tag as an effort to make himself more approachable.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, had two name tags.  One of the name tags read "Alexander, Inventor", and the other was a bit frivolous...it read "Ding a Ling".