True Name

**True Name** is a name that expresses a being's true nature. There is a power in the knowledge of a true name which allows one to affect another person or being magically. The knowledge *or* ignorance of being's true name can be either a help or hindrance depending on the circumstance.

## Effects

### Connection with Grays

Knowing a Gray's name is dangerous, as speaking the name out loud can lead to a forming of connection—a binding of one's life to the Gray's. In doing so, normally harmless Grays are empowered to be drawn to the speaker's location and essentially haunt them. Even if a living person knows almost an entirety of their life story, being ignorant of a Gray's name is a defense against connection formation. Lethe House employs this defense, redacting the names of Yale and New Haven Grays in their numerous files, so that Lethe delegates aren't tempted to say Grays' names aloud.

### Power over People

Using a person's true name, while having no effect in mundane settings and context, has some effect on a person when under magical influence.

## Ninth House

Alex Stern and Darlington as Dante and Virgil of Lethe House have to be vigilant to never say a Gray's name aloud. When Darlington spots the spirit of Frederic Prokosch at the Aurelian ritual, he urges Alex to banish the spirit, knowing that even speaking death words to a Gray whose name he knew would risk a connection forming between them.

At the Manuscript Halloween party, Darlington was drugged with a kind of hallucinogen. As he clung to Alex desperately, Alex called his name, *Darlington*, to no avail. Darlington idly thought "that was not his true name any more than Alex was hers." It wouldn't be until Alex forcefully bit Darlington's ear that he was able to snap out of the worst of the drug's effects.

In the Egyptian borderlands, in the symbolic river of the Nile, Galaxy Stern and Bertram Boyce North exchanged their true names. In doing so, they solidified their pact, but more importantly, it enabled North to easily find Alex and communicate with her through a body of water as, “They are all crossing places for us now.”

In Alex's confrontation with Daisy Fanning Whitlock, a powerful Wheelwalker, Daisy warningly called *Alexandra*, when she sensed Alex resisting her consumption of Alex's memories and soul. Alex resisted Daisy's power, calling the Grays of New Haven to her aid using her own abilities as a Wheelwalker, and harnessed their energy to call forth the names of the girls Daisy consumed. Daisy again called the name *Alexandra*, only for Alex to rebuke her, declaring her name Galaxy. At this, the Grays of New Haven released a sigh of power that summoned the lost girls from within Daisy. After which, Alex spoke the true name, *Daisy Fanning Whitlock*, and used her abilities as a Wheelwalker to avoid being possessed, casting Daisy's spirit out to be destroyed.

## Behind the Scenes

* From the details of *Ninth House* Chapter 32, it is an assumption that only a Wheelwalker could speak True Names to use the binding of a Gray to one's soul to their advantage.
* In her confrontation between Alex and Daisy, it is only presumed that Daisy was trying to invoke Alex's true name by calling out *Alexandra*. As Professor Marguerite Belbalm, head of Johnathan Edwards College, Daisy would remain unaware of Alex's true name as Alex's school forms listed her as 'Alex Stern.' Her school records have been filled out that way since she was twelve.
* As of *Ninth House*, Alex speculates that Darlington is called 'Gentleman Demon' by demons frightened of him. It is possible that they are wary of saying Darlington or Daniel Arlington in fear of invoking his true name.

## Quotes

* “Call to the missing!” Alex cried. “Call to the lost! I know their names” And names had power." (Ninth House Chapter 31)

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ninth House Chapter 12 (Winter)
2. ↑ Ninth House Chapter 1 (Winter)
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Ninth House Chapter 10 (Last Fall)
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Ninth House Chapter 31 (Early Spring)
5. ↑ Ninth House Chapter 6 (Last Fall)
6. ↑ *Ninth House* Chapter 4 (Last Fall)