My name is Raymond J. Johnson Junior.
You can call me Ray.
Or you can call me Jay.
You can call me Ishmael.
But ya doesn’t have to call me Mister Johnson.
(A reference that no one not living in the 1970s will get.)
Actually, the editor made more than one blunder. The line was supposed the read: Call me-ish, Mael, meaning he wants a guy named Mael (an old Celtic name) to sort of call him on the phone.
While Judas is definitely better known, what he’s better known for would be all wrong for the book.
Even today there seems to be a difference between US and UK English: Brits will use “called” where Americans would use “named.” A British person would say “He’s called Ishmael” to mean that “Ishmael” is his name, but as an American, I’d be tempted to interpret this as “His actual name may be something completely different, but ‘Ishmael’ is what people call him.”
19th-century Brits (well, Lewis Carroll, anyway) do seem to have made that distinction at least some of the time:
“You are sad,” the Knight said in an anxious tone: “let me sing you a song to comfort you.”
“Is it very long?” Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
“It’s long,” said the Knight, “but very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—”
“Or else what?” said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
“Or else it doesn’t, you know. The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes.’”
“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.
“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man.’”
“Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.
“No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways and Means’: but that’s only what it’s called, you know!”
“Well, what is the song, then?” said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
“I was coming to that,” the Knight said. “The song really is ‘A-sitting On A Gate’: and the tune’s my own invention.”
Of course the name Ahab has some negative connotations as well.
Again, I hadn’t read the Bible, so these references were not apparent.
Unlike, perhaps, Ishmael, Ahab’s is a given name chosen by his “insane, widowed mother.” I suspect a lot of this is Melville just goofing on the proclivity for obscure biblical names in insular New England communities. Just like how an outsider writing about Mormons might.
BTW I remember being bored to death by the novel, despite it being so highly regarded. I think there was an entire chapter that described a rope or line on the ship.
Different strokes I guess. That’s what I loved about it, alternating chapters between the whaling adventure and obscure tangents.
There were also entire chapters on processing spermaceti, and many other topics. Such details (and they way they symbolically fit into the narrative; these are not completely non sequitur) written by an actual sailor are the exact opposite of boring.
I didn’t mind Billy Budd, though. That was shorter and easier to read. (Though my English class was convinced that Melville was gay based on that book.)
He does mention that he sometimes feels violent, knocking off people’s hats. Maybe he just added the “hats” part, though…and meant to say, “knocking off people”. (I am recalling this from my memory, and the sentence might not have said exactly that, but the meaning is the same…he is fed up with humanity and needs to get out to sea, but I like your idea about the possibility that he is a serial killer, it made me laugh).
He did write a book called Moby Dick (aka The Whale)…
But of course it’s pronounced Throat wabbler mangrove…
Meanwhile, My name’s John Lee Pettimore. Same as my daddy and his daddy before…
I’ve heard a few people use the opening line based on their understand of it. For instance starting a tale of woe and/or failure with the line. I just assumed it was the name of the narrator when I read the book.
Which has a whole chapter about the pleasures of squeezing sperm…
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,–Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.