Adam has always been a weird name for people to call the Daemon in Frankenstein. He specifically compares himself to Lucifer next and says "ought to be thy Adam" rather than "I am thy Adam" because he can't connect to Adam and more connects to being Lucifer. Out of curiosity, why do you also choose to call him Adam rather than some variation of that? Is it because of Lucifer being more on-the-nosely religious than Adam?
Ooh, hi! So this is such a good question and a very interesting take on the naming conventions we have for the silly /gen :)
I like this interpretation a lot but this is kind of funny because I and one of my fictive headmates of the Creature were talking about it once (last year I think) who goes by Adam because this question was brought up in a less complex but still related light
And my personal answers for it are 1.) most of the fandom calls him Adam so it caught on better 2.) I already have an OC of sorts who I'm debating nicknaming Lucifer, and 3.) "Adam" just "fit" because it makes sense that, when choosing a name for itself, the Creature wouldn't have wanted to name himself after someone who was the "epitome of sin and evil". Why give Victor another reason to demonize him? The Creature wanted to blend in and to seem normal to other humans and being named Lucifer wouldn't have made that easy, ESPECIALLY in the 1700s. Any time else also wouldnt be good but yknow! Yeah, Adam also has notable religious connotations, but its a more socially acceptable name in comparison to Lucifer, and yeah, the Creature specifically notes that Lucifer was unjustly casted away, but itd be hard to convince medieval humans of that. He gets pelted with rocks enough as it is /silly
Also my favourite reason for wanting to go for Adam rather than any other name: Adam, the name, comes from two things: the Hebrew word for "of the soil/earth", אֲדָמָה (adamah), which is also the word used to describe the process of Adam from the bible being risen from the GROUND...aka Adam the monster being risen from tombs...and the generic Hebrew word for man or human person, אָדָם (adam), essentially meaning that the name Adam is describing three entire things! His relationship with Victor on some level, how he was made, and the fact that—despite everything—he IS a human!
Besides the comparison to Lucifer in relation to Victor (and the still Victor-based spite spree), Lucifer just...doesn't have that kind of triple meaning to it, and I am VERY obsessed with the meaning I put into fucking EVERYTHING.
Adam (headmate) viewed it as the Creature not wanting to be Lucifer. Not ONLY in the sense of not being the embodiment of what humanity considers evil, but SPECIFICALLY in relation to Victor whom the line was said to.
Sure, he said he couldn't connect to Adam because of Victor treating him the way God treated Lucifer, but he said that he ought to be Adam, he should be Adam. In fact, maybe it wasn't him saying he couldn't connect to Adam as an identity but that—even though he felt a connection to Adam—his situation made him more akin to Lucifer.
Like...Adam had a more eloquent way of putting this but i forgot what he said so ill try to find my own way to describe it. You want to be something or are something deep down but nobody treats you like it. You want to be your creator's first magnum opus but you're just his disgraced creation.
That being said, why would Creature want to go by Lucifer? If he personally feels like he ought to be Adam, then he has little reason to choose the name Lucifer for himself. Sure, it makes a lot more sense narrative wise, but Creature has more reasons to want to connect himself more to Adam than he has to go by the name of the character he was forced to be by proxy of Victor fucking hating him.
Now, one neat idea I have is the idea of the Creature going by Adam at first only to start going by Lucifer the moment it killed William. Is this anything? Anyone?
