When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.

The line links personal naming to survival in cultural memory: a “name” is not merely a label but a claim to identity, lineage, and story. To “hang on to it” suggests active resistance against forces—social erasure, displacement, racism, or historical neglect—that strip people of self-definition. The warning that a name will “die when you do” underscores how anonymity can sever one’s connection to community and history, while being “noted down and remembered” implies the counterwork of testimony, record-keeping, and narrative. In Morrison’s broader concerns, naming often functions as a moral and political act: to name is to insist on personhood and to secure a place in collective remembrance.