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Kisa Schultz
Professor Tripp
ENGL 429
15 July 2016
The Names on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street examines the concept of name and what
it means. We see throughout the novel that duality is inherent within the bicultural child, not just
because the child is raised in two cultures, but because their names as representations of their
core identities capture those cultures. Cisneros also distinguishes names as personal signifiers
from categorizers. She even questions whether one name is enough to encapsulate an entire
identity. Through these lenses, Cisneros explores what a name is in terms of identity and
meaning, for the purpose of uncovering the complexity of a deceptively simple term.
By combining the motifs of names and bilingualism, Cisneros demonstrates that the
duality of a child/adolescents bicultural identity extends far beyond simply embodying two
cultures. Esperanza discusses her name in one of the earliest vignettes, suggesting that this is an
important topic to her. She begins the vignette by defining her name in English and Spanish, each
definition revealing the most prominent conflict within the bicultural child. Her name means
hope in English, but in Spanish it is too many letters, sadness, waiting, the Mexican
records [her] father plays on Sunday mornings (10). The English meaning is a direct and simple
translation, a piece of banal trivia to share with a new classmate or friend. In Spanish, however,
her name conveys weighted feelings and experiences. The former definition may be spoken in
passing and quickly forgotten, but the latter is personal, almost vulnerable, and must be read in
order to evoke the emotion of its depth. The constant struggle of the bilingual child is translating
words from each language into the other without sacrificing any of their myriad meanings. To

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leave a nuance behind is to butcher the mother tongue. Even simple pronunciation does not
transcend linguistic boundaries. Esperanza rues that her classmates say her name funny as if the
syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth (11). The complex Spanish
definition of her name at the vignettes opening implies a sense of pride in it, one that is
threatened by non-Chicano students who do not care to try pronouncing her name well. As the
name Esperanza also carries the weight of her grandmothers subjugated identity, our protagonist
fights against traditional, Chicana values in favor of liberal, American ones. I have inherited her
name, she observes, but I dont want to inherit her place by the window. She uses the
knowledge of her grandmothers domestication to decide to escape from the window seat that
she could so easily occupy. Her name and its familial history serve as guidance in the way that it
teachers her what she does not want. Of course, Esperanza will have to battle her way through a
mans world no matter which culture she navigates through, but she sees from women in her
family and neighborhood, and from her private school that she has a better chance of success in
white society outside of Mango Street. Cisneros beautifully illustrates that Esperanza is so
much more than just a label for a young Chicana girl in Chicago. It is a collection of universal
and personal experiences, pains of mistranslation, and history of female subjugation.
Cisneros broadens her exploration of names by debating, through her characters, whether
a name is a personal signifier or a categorizer. In the vignette And Some More, Esperanza, her
sister, and their friends discuss snow, which leads both the friend Rachel and the sister Nenny to
confuse what Esperanza means by names. She starts by sharing the idea that Eskimos got
thirty different names for snow, meaning that they have various terms to categorize different
types of snow (35). In response, Rachel says she has a cousin with three different names,
interpreting the word as something that refers to a person and their identity instead of an
organizational tool. Rachel also brings back the motif of bilingualism when she notes that her

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cousin has one first name in English and a separate first name in Spanish, recalling my
previously discussed depth of the bicultural personality. Nenny picks this idea up and spends the
rest of the vignette listing Names just like you and me while the other girls go on about
categorical names for clouds (36). The constant back and forth between a name as a persons
identifier and an objects category for the duration of the vignette demonstrates that the concept
of name is not simple. We may assume it never will be, because this conversation began before
our introduction to it and likely continues afterwards, its ideas expanding beyond the boundaries
of what Cisneros provides for her readers. Names carry not only our identities, but also their own
identities as multi-functional labels for both people and objects.
After establishing the intricacies of what a name is and can mean, Cisneros deconstructs
and questions the idea of a name being able to carry our full identity. The vignette Geraldo No
Last Name details a vague incident of Geraldo, whom a Mango Street girl named Marin meets
at a dance. The title immediately gives the reader a sense of fragmented identity. Many
characters like Rachel and Marin are not given last names, but we understand that this is a sign
of Esperanzas familiarity with them. Geraldo, the narration says, Thats what he told her, as
if his last name were not an important detail to Marin at the time of their meeting (65). And
indeed it is not, which is made tragically ironic when he is somehow injured and Marin cannot
give hospital workers or the police any official identifying information about him. He did not
have an address, a name, or anything in his pockets to systematically indicate who he was and
help officials know who to notify and where (66). Geraldos fate is sealed by the absence of
any official documentation of his existence, the simplest possible identifier being a last name. At
the beginning of the novel, Esperanza explains in depth the immense weight that her name
carries in meaning, and many of Cisneros readers can identify with that concept. Through
Geraldo, she separates self-identification from outward perception, indicating to her readers that

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the meaning we assign to our own names does not translate into the legal system or the
environment around us. Esperanza and her family may acknowledge that her name means her
grandmothers experiences, but outsiders will not automatically perceive that, nor will they be
able to use that information to search for her in a legal database should anything happen to her.
The reader is left wondering if a single name is enough to encapsulate an entire identity, if ones
personality or legal information are more important to defining that identity. Cisneros shrouds
the answer in uncertainty, made more vague by the unclear narration of the vignette itself. The
narration claims that They never saw the kitchenettes. They never knew about the two-room
flatsHow could they? (66). That Esperanza obtained this information is rather questionable,
which draws the vignette backwards into an omniscient and mysterious space. In this space,
Cisneros can interfere with the foundations she has built around what a name means to
individuals, and show her readers that society and law see none of that meaning.
By looking at name through different lenses and placing it in different contexts,
Cisneros opens the floodgates of what a name can and does carry. We can all identify with or at
least understand the idea that our names have definable meanings or hold the identities of those
people we inherit them from. Esperanza sees her name as an embodiment of bicultural and
bilingual conflict, as well as an example of who she does not want to become. Cisneros also
plays with the idea of how a name functions, whether it is a personal identifier or a categorizer.
She then shows her reader with the story of Geraldo that our names and the meanings we assign
to them cannot transcend us, since outside forces like the law require information such as a
surname or address. Our names are only collections of letters, combinations of sounds used
mostly for calling attention to or from someone. The House on Mango Street allows us to see that
a name can be so much more complex than letters and sounds, that they can both carry
generations of meaning, and not mean anything at all.

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Works Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Random House, Inc., 1984. Print.