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.



3 comments:

Adelaide Dupont said...

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

Lili Marlene said...

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.

Lili Marlene said...

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.