According to Walter Shandy, names “irresistibly impress’d upon our character and conduct” (43). This means that you can understand a man and his character just by knowing his name. In chapter XIX of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, we go to the main characters basic information, his name. We hear from Tristram time and time again how his life was destined to be doomed even before he was born. We get some insight into his father Walter Shandy and the name he chose for his son Tristram.

Walter Shandy had very particular views about the names you give your children. He said “he would lose all kind of patience whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who should have known better, — as careless and as indifferent about the name they imposed upon their child” (45). In the footnote, Tristram is stated as “Walter Shandy has an aversion to the name, which derives from the French ‘triste’ or ‘sad’, and implies ‘son of sorrow’” (547).  From the footnote we now understand the meaning of Tristram and the tragedy of being given a name by someone who absolutely abhors it.

It was as if Walter had an obsession with the name since he would often think about it and dispute it with others. Walter had a very strong opinion of anyone with the name Tristram and even said “he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum natura, but what was extremely mean and pitiful” (46). Walter strongly believed that a man could not possibly do anything positive or worthwhile with his life if his name was Tristram. Walter focused so much on his aversion of the name that two years before Tristram was born he decided to write his opinions of it in a dissertation.

Focusing solely on the passage (and not the film), we don’t quite get why Walter named his son Tristram especially since he’s gone to great lengths to show his disapproval. What we do see is how it supports Tristrams claims that if it weren’t for his parents and their actions, even before he was born, he would have turned out much differently. Everything that has gone wrong and will go wrong in his life is all due to his parent’s mistakes even before his conception. I believe Walter feels as if he’s been jinxed in having a son named Tristram because of the way Tristram was conceived. We know from the first page that Tristram’s conception was interrupted by his mother Elizabeth asking Walter if he’d wind the clock. Walter expresses how he has suffered everyday during Tristram’s childhood when he says “ten times in a day suffering sorrow;-ten times in a day calling the child of his prayers TRISTRAM!—Melancholy dissyllable of a sound! which, to his ears, was unison to Nicompoop” (47). Understanding the meaning of Tristram is understanding the man and his family. Even after knowing Walter’s views on the name, we understand the irony and how Tristram was destined to fail from the moment he was born.