#the doctor's name

[sun-spice]

The Doctor's name is a collection of emotions and/or concepts.

Listen: hear me out.

Gallifreyans/Time Lords are telepathic, some other people have speculated that they initially communicated telepathically and then later developed a written and oral language in order to more easily store and communicate information on more complex concepts.

We know that Gallifreyans are very superstitious about people knowing their name. Telling someone your name is a (love commitment) marriage tradition. Expressing who you are in emotions and concepts is extremely vulnerable and could be as to why they're so reticent about names.

Now when spoken language developed so did oral and written names. These were especially needed when communicating with non-telepathic species, but the superstitions still remained hence the really long names like Romana's full name. Some Gallifreyans, the ones who didn't like the change perhaps or who didn't like the long names just started refering to each other by description (the one person who lives in Arcadia by the large dead tree... And oh yeah she's a blacksmith btw) which probably very quickly just became shorter and shorter until you get stuff like the Blacksmith and the General. And eventually people probably just started picking out what they thought was cool (the Master, the Doctor, the Rani).

But the telepathic names still remained as part of the culture as a marriage rite and are considered to be one's truest name.

"Children can hear it. Sometimes, if their hearts are in the right place, and the stars are too, children can hear your name."

[expectiations]

Okay but there is no way in HELL River is staying away from the Doctor if she gets out in canon. So either she misses them by a (few) incarnation(s) and she'll eventually come back for good on the show. On our TV screens. OR she stumbles into the Division Doctor instead and stays with them. I really don't see another alternative here 😃

On that note, I recently read this fic that gave a new spin on how the Doctor shared their name to River. It wasn't a word. It was something complex, Time Lord-y, and more of a...neural link?(??)

I may be getting it wrong but it wasn't a spoken name but this telepathic connection that involved the fifth dimension (?). I'm conjuring this all up from a dying memory and overwrought, single brain cell.

Which then explains why River and the Doctor keep on bumping (-ish) into each other throughout time and space.

So to connect that with your ask (how am I going to connect it with your ask), would the Doctor somehow "feel" River's presence? Though as a data ghost, do neural links still work? Does it too somehow break all known laws and still supersede death?

Anyway, I am glad we got a post-Library River (coming this August on Big Finish!!) BUT I also am low-key anxious over what the box set writer said.

Maybe River would go pop in on her darling's life. Maybe she'd be in the background pulling strings and stuff (raising their Time Tots 👀 with another version of the Doctor – Doctor Moon? The Curator? "Retired" Fourteen?). Maybe she'd also gone around on adventures and what-not with Fugitive Doctor. Or maybe she's the grandmistress wreaking havoc on the universe. Who knows?

Lots of questions. No River to answer them.

[themuskrater]

FUN FACT

The Doctor's real name, while generally a mystery, does have a canon answer. The Doctor's real name is "δ³Σx²" (delta cubed sigma x squared). This equation is the Doctor's canon real name and has appeared in multiple episodes and spin off media such as "The Five Doctors" and "The Trial of Doctor Who"

So mystery solved, right? Just finish the equation and we know the Doctor's real name. Well...it's more complicated than that. The equation is incomplete. Because we don't know the value of "x" in the equation, The Doctor's proper name is still a mystery

[theangelshavethephonebox]

"Tell me your name"

One shot about being told the Doctor's name, inspired by the scene from "interference book one" (the EDA), which I saw in this post: https://at.tumblr.com/mores0/704770235854635008/89p9x35asrxz

@mores0 wouldn't have written this if you hadn't posted that, so thank you for sharing that passage from the book

[heroofthreefaces]

To the question of when, in show chronology, the Doctor begins to refer to himself as such, rather than just answering to it :

In An Unearthly Child, there are four characters : Ian and Barbara, busybodies in the shape of schoolteachers ; Susan, the charming lass they decide they need to do a welfare check on ; and the crotchety old man Susan addresses only as "Grandfather". Ian calls him "Doctor Forman", to which he responds (somewhat peevishly, as is his wont) "Doctor who?", giving us the title of the show.

But what put it into Ian's head to use that form of address? If Susan had been referring to him at school as "my grandfather, the Doctor", or had put that down on some kind of enrollment paperwork, one hardly supposes she came up with the moniker without any input at all from him.

It's a question to me because I've seen it contended, and cannot dispute, that though he answers to Doctor after the first time Barbara/Ian call him that, he himself doesn't use the title to identify himself until sometime past the first series, I don't remember when. In fact he generally responds to expectations of actually behaving like a doctor by rebutting, "I am not a doctor of [whatever the subject is, usually medicine]!"

When Ian called him "Dr. Foreman" in the first or second episode, it was because of Ian's associations between him and Susan and the school's information on Susan. When the Doctor didn't know why he was calling him that, Ian and Babara just took it that his name is something else than Foreman without questioning the Doctor part, and the rest is history. But obviously Susan took the surname from the junkyard where they'd set up housekeeping. And if the Doctor did have any input into what Susan invented to write in her school records, his reaction when Ian called him "Dr. Foreman" tells us he no longer remembered about it by the time Barbara and Ian came along. And, conversely, tells us that "Susan" was not something she invented for the school records.

I'd just never noticed this before I read about it. And I wish I remembered, from what I read, at what point it was that the Doctor began actually calling himself that.

Hang on - potting about in my tags to decide what to tag this post, I came across this reblog of a post from @circular-time which appears to be my actual source for the issue and the answer to my question. So, unless this reblog is the same thing which prompted your ask, check it out.

[twelveskidneys]

[ohmerricat]

do you think a susan twist copy has ever interacted with a clara oswald echo as they unconsciously battled for dominance along the strands of the doctor’s twisted timestream and despite both of them believing themselves to be ordinary humans with normal lives they looked into each other’s eyes and felt a glimmer of uncanny recollection of horrors yet to come

[deadrobinsclub-est1988]

[chittychittyyangyang]

Listen, you should never film strangers in public without their consent, but I swear there need to be fines or something for people who do that shit in some spaces. For example: I had to go to the ER last night, and some jerk filmed a woman who just came in and was clearly having an asthma attack. She immediately got to go back, and he was unhappy about that. Believe me, I get that it sucks having to wait when you're in pain, but you don't get to pick who deserves care when. The medical system in the US is a nightmare, and the ER could be the worst moment of someone's life. No one deserves to be recorded because some jack ass believes someone doesn't look like they need care.

This is fine to reblog. People who film strangers should be shamed if nothing else.

[lady-disdain221b]

they were made for each other, your honor

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

The thing about doctor who is that it’s so fucking stupid and unserious at times but after a while you get used to it and don’t even bat an eye when some guy introduces himself with the stupidest name you’ve ever heard because it’s doctor who

[cozylittleartblog]

what if there was a plague doctor that was so so so cute (and was also secretly a bird themself)

[aenslem]

Leverage (2008–2012) & Leverage: Redemption (2021–) x DOCTOR WHO

[nobleriver]

The Doctor and River Song + Being A Besotted Old Married Couple

I’m all yours, Sweetie.  Only River Song gets to call me that.

Bonus:

[notherpuppet]

Some irl moments repped by the hazbin cast

[therelatablestudent]

Thinking about how chaotic the 10th Doctor was toward the end where he just had a HUGE meltdown. He’s like “I am god I can bend time to my will” and suddenly hes chillin wearing a lei in the snow thinking the height of entertainment is locking the TARDIS like a car