Most hats have SKU numbers. Style 4729-B, Cap-Charcoal-12. They're inventory codes pretending to be names.
We give ours actual names. The Owl. The SA. The Wings.
This is a small choice but not an arbitrary one. A SKU is a thing in a database. A name is something different — it's a thing that exists in language, and once a thing has a name in language, people start to refer to it that way, talk about it that way, lose it and look for it that way.
Boats get names. Cars get nicknames. Old leather jackets, if they're around long enough, end up with names. The instinct to name an object is the instinct to admit it has a kind of life. You don't write Style 4729-B in your will. But you might write the brown one your grandfather wore.
We're not trying to romanticize a hat. We're trying to make objects worth naming. The naming is just the part you can hear.
The Owl is loud. The SA is the insider's. The Wings is silent. They'll get worn, lost, looked for, replaced. Each name is a small bet that the object underneath it is worth the language.
— Sapere Aude