Howling:Is the Doctor's name a Carrionite spell?

The Howling → Is the Doctor's name a Carrionite spell?

There be spoilers about un-released stories here.
Run back to the forums if you're scared.

I've been thinking lately that the Doctor's name couldn't be that dangerous as a normal name. For example, we know Goth and Romana's full names, so if the Doctor's name was normal for a Gallifreyan, it wouldn't be at all dangerous to space and time continuing.

Which has lead me onto something...

Not even the Carrionites know his true name, while the Silence are intent on stopping him speaking it at all, specifically on the fields on Trenzalore. Could there be the possibility that the Doctor's name is a Carrionite spell? Carrionite science is used by speaking the right words at the the right time with the right shapes present, so perhaps they know that if he speaks his name on Trenzalore, at a specific time, it will unleash something?

I don't see how his name could be dangerous, that's all.

Gallifrey102 ☎ 19:14, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

A Carrionite spell (or something along the same lines) is a possibility. As I recall, it wasn't only that the Carrionites didn't know his true name. They couldn't even find it out & were very surprised by that. Remember, also, Reinette (The Girl in the Fireplace) said, "It's more than just a secret," while she was reading his mind. --78.146.182.62^{talk to me} 22:39, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

I doubt it's a Carrionite spell, but it may be relevant to the Carrionite idea of "the power of the name." Don't forget though, the mystery isn't just the Doctor's name. The Master, the Rani, the Monk, the Corsair (I may be missing a few), all seem to hide their names just like the Doctor. The pattern would seem to be that renegade Time Lords, for whatever reason, can no longer go by their true names. Even the Time Lords refer to the Doctor and the Master by their chosen names instead of their true names. Their are a few possible explanations for this. One is that when a Time Lord runs away from Gallifrey, the Time Lord's take away their name as some sort of punishment. The other is that when a Time Lord runs away from Gallifrey, it would be too dangerous to allow anyone else to know their name, so they deliberately hide it, from even the Time Lords. The Carrionites are, in all likelihood, not involved with the current story arc, but the same technobabble phenomenon that gives them power over names may be why renegade Time Lords hide their names. It is also likely that the Doctor's name is somehow relevant to the TARDIS explosion from season 5. Maybe after finding out the Doctor's name on Trenzalore, the Silence were able to use the name to gain the TARDIS' trust and cause it to explode.Icecreamdif ☎ 00:28, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

I take it you go for "something along the same lines", rather than an actual Carrionite spell. Fair enough -- if the power of the name works for the Carrionites, it ought to work for others, too.

I'm not sure you're not misleading yourself, though, by assuming that the pseudonymous Time Lords all use pseudonyms for exactly the same reason. Some humans in the real world use pseudonyms but their reasons for doing so vary. The same is quite likely to be true of Time Lords. If, as seems to be the case, there was an existing tradition of some Time Lords adopting pseudonyms, that could be used as "cover" by one Time Lord who had a special, different reason for concealing his name. --78.146.188.39^{talk to me} 11:33, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

What's interesting is that the Silence were probaly on Earth when the Carrionites were so the whole power of name idea could be related to the question that must not be answered. 87.102.83.229^{talk to me} 13:40, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

Sure, it's possible that some Time Lord's use pseudonyms for different reasons. That's why I didn't include the War Chief in my list of examples. All of the aliens in that episode seemed to go by titles (The War Lord, The Security Chief, etc.), so it is not too out of the ordinary that he wouldn't use his true name. The Monk, similarly, was pretending to be a monk, so "The Monk" might not be a pseudonym in the same way as "The Doctor" and "The Master", but simply a description of him. However, The Doctor, The Master, The Rani, and The Corsair all follow the exact same pattern. They are all renegade Time Lords who go by "The Title" and are even referred to as their pseudonyms by other Time Lords, including those who must have known them before they chose their pseudonym. Forgive me if I forgot about someone, but the only renegade Time Lords who I can think of who did not hide their names are Romana, who is only arguably a renegade Time Lord (she sort of ignored the council asking her to return to Gallifrey and ended up remaining in e-space, but she was assigned to help the Doctor recover the keys of time, and couldn't return immediately because of the randomiser), and Kanpo Rimpoche, who also may not be a renegade Time Lord as we don't really know much about him except that he's from Gallifrey. Their is clearly a pattern here that renegade Time Lords generally prefer to use an alias. In recent episodes, it has been shown that a Time Lord's body is extremely powerful and must be burned upon death to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Given the Carrionite idea of the power of a name, perhaps a Time Lord's name is similarly more powerful than other kinds of names, and must be hidden at all costs by those who choose to regularly stay away from Gallifrey.Icecreamdif ☎ 18:11, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not denying the "power of the name" point. I am saying that I think it's a mistake to assume that the Doctor's name is hidden for the same reasons as the names of the Master, the Rani, the Corsair, etc. were hidden. Learning (say) the Master's true name would have given the Carrionites power over the Master. All the indications are that learning the Doctor's true name would do much, much more than just give someone power over the Doctor. The reasons may be related. The reasons may be similar in some ways. But it seems that there's something of greater magnitude &, probably, of a different kind involved in the secret of the Doctor's name.

The point about the power of the name is that it gives power over the person (or thing) named -- but only over that. Knowing Joe's true name gives you no power over Fred. You could, of course, make Joe do something to Fred but you couldn't do anything to Fred directly. Yet, when the question about the Doctor's name is asked & answered, "Silence must fall" (as Dorium said was a more accurate rendition). --89.241.78.123^{talk to me} 21:42, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

An interesting thing about his name, they repeat multiple times "Hidden in plain sight" in relation to his name. If you have the closed captioning on when you watch "The Wedding of River Song" when the blue head says it again, on the CC it breaks the name in an odd way, yes of course showing the audible emphasis, but the way it was done could be significant, it was spelled out as Doc Tor-who, literally like that, Now not being an expert in Gallifreyan naming customs, how that was written could be completely meaningless, but it just might not. If so it would be a terribly bad pun, but I don't think that would stop the writers.