Monday, April 26, 2010

Opal Whiteley's colourful name

Opal Irene Whiteley – this strikes me as a name that a synaesthete who is fascinated with colours might choose for a baby daughter. Synaesthetes often have a special fascination with colours. Opal Irene Whiteley was a very strange and highly intelligent writer who spent the last fifty-odd years of her life in an institution under the label of schizophrenia. In 1995 Whiteley was posthumously identifed by child psychiatrist Sula Wolff as a case of schizoid personality disorder, and Whiteley has more recently been identified by academic Julie Brown as an autist and a synaesthete. Synesthesia is an inherited condition. Was Opal named by a synesthete parent?

The surname Whiteley has the word white in it. Most people would be reminded of this colour by this surname. The first name Opal is from a type of gemstone. When most people think of an opal I guess they would think of the cheaper and more common but very pretty milky-coloured type of opal. The middle given name Irene is a white-coloured name in my mind, because I’m a grapheme-colour synaesthete, and I associate the letter I with the colour white, and the first letter of a word or name often colours the rest of the name or word in the minds of synesthetes. I have read that the letters I and O are often associated with the colours black or white by grapheme-color synesthetes, and there is a theory to explain this, which I won’t go into now. The name Irene also has a quiet sort of sound that goes well with the gentle, unstimulating colour of white. So you have a name that evokes the colours milky opalescent, white, then white again. That’s one pretty name!

Link to The Diary of Opal Whiteley from The Intersect Digital Library
http://intersect.uoregon.edu/opal/default.html

Many thanks to the people at Intersect for making this free resource available.

P. S. Opal had a sister named Pearl. A definite theme there.



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3 comments:

  1. Adelaide Dupont12:59 AM

    I've seen all kinds of coloured opals.

    For example, green ones and purple ones. Not to mention all the shining lights in each one.

    Irene does seem like a cool and calming name.

    It's interesting to think of Opal's Mum and Dad.

    Just reading chapter 1 over here:

    The Road beyond the Singing Creek and Opal's New Home

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  2. Lili Marlene4:34 AM

    I had a look at that text, which I guess is from Opal's childhood diary, and I'm quite amazed at the weirdness of the language used. She certainly is fond of the word "do"! I get the impression that this is how a child might write if they hadn't been speaking long before they learned the printed word, or learned to read before speaking.

    I'm going to get a hold of a children's book which is I believe a republication of Opal's childhood diary. It will be interesting to see if the weird language is corrected, because I would think that most teachers would be horrified at giving a child such strange syntax to read.

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  3. Lili Marlene4:50 AM

    I noticed that the short biography of Whiteley at the website that Adelaide Dupont has linked to is a bit of a whitewash. No mention of where Opal spent the second half of her life. "Although Opal went on to have many other adventures in life...." like spending over 40 years in a psychiatric institution. But it's great that we can all read Opal's diary on the internet at no cost.

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