Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

Rushdie is reflecting on how language and naming lose their original force over time. A name may begin as a compressed story—rooted in etymology, place, conquest, religion, or family memory—but once it becomes everyday currency it is often reduced to a convenient label, “mere sounds.” Habit functions like dust: it covers the strangeness and historical depth that words once carried. The image suggests that recovering meaning requires an act of excavation—attention, scholarship, or imaginative re-seeing. In Rushdie’s work, where identity, migration, and cultural translation are recurring concerns, the line also hints that names can conceal layered histories that modern usage forgets or suppresses.