"______, thy name is ______" is a snowclone used to indicate the completeness with which something or somebody embodies a particular quality, usually a negative one.
History
In most instances, the usage is an allusion to the Shakespearean play Hamlet. In this work, the title character is chastised by his uncle, Claudius, for grieving his father so much, calling it unmanly. In his resultant soliloquy, Hamlet denounces his mother's swift remarriage with the statement, "Frailty, thy name is woman." He thus describes all of womankind as frail and weak in character. The phrase is recognized as one of the "memorable expressions" from the play to become "proverbial". In the book Idiom Structure in English by Adam Makkai, the author asserts that the phrase is included among English idioms that are expressed in a "standard format" and whose usage "signals to the hearer that he is using an authority in underscoring his own opinion." Researchers Andrew Littlejohn and Sandhya Rao Mehta acknowledged that the famous quote rendered not only a discursive use, but a constructional one as well, noting that "the structure itself can be used a salient, but neutral equation formula...'noun thy name is noun.'"
Examples
Law
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting from the Court's decision in King v. Burwell, upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, repeatedly used the construction to criticize the Court's majority opinion, stating: "Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!"; "Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!"; and "Contrivance, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!"
The poet Anne Sexton titled a poem "Divorce, Thy Name Is Woman".
Borrowing directly from Hamlet, Edmond Dantès utters the phrase "Frailty, thy name is woman!" in The Count of Monte Cristo after learning that his fiancée, Mercédès, has married his rival Fernand.
In the James Joyce novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom utters the phrase, "Fraility, thy name is marriage," in response to a quip.
In the Clive Cussler novel "Plague Ship", Juan Cabrillo quips, "Ego, thy name is Gomez," to Corporation helicopter pilot Gomez Adams after he brags about his perfect takeoff.
The Half Man Half Biscuit song "Whiteness, Thy Name Is Meltonian", from the 1993 album This Leaden Pall, refers to a brand of None-More-White shoe polish.
The lyrics "Frailty, thy name is weakness. Vengeance, thy name is pain" appear in the Dark Tranquillity song "...Of Melancholy Burning".
Television
Samantha on Bewitched says to Darrin, "Vanity, thy name is human".
In Taxi, Jim, on learning that Zena is to marry another man : "Oh, perfidy! Thy name is woman!"
Bart Simpson says, "Comedy, thy name is Krusty" in The Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Busted".
Danny Tanner on Full House says "Loneliness, thy name is Danny".
Professor Farnsworth on Futurama says in his recorded message, "Oh vanity, thy name is Professor Farnsworth".
Referring to his wife, Ray Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond, says, "Devil, thy name is woman!"
Gil Grissom on says, "Vanity, thy name is Hodges", referring to another CSI, David Hodges, after walking in on him trying to color some of his greying hair with a sharpie while looking intensely at his reflection in a piece of lab equipment.
Winn Schott on Supergirl says to James Olsen, "Jealousy, thy name is Olsen", when Olsen denied he had a look after seeing how Kara talks to Barry Allen.
