Naming and Gender in James Joyce\u27s Fiction

In his fiction James Joyce plays unabashedly with names and naming. His attention to women\u27s names is revealing, since he nicknames female characters differently from the way that he nicknames male characters, and he allows the females to generate names for themselves. Though historically a legacy of male tradition, the naming of women, as it occurs in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), becomes decidedly female: Joyce\u27s women characters exploit the opportunity to name and rename themselves, reinventing their identities, veiling and unveiling their personalities.