He Named Her “Moon Child”
Am I the only one who thinks it’s strange that the name Bastian picks for the Childlike Empress in The Neverending Story is “Moon Child”?
Because I live online, I know your answer is either “No, because that is a weird name to give anyone, even in a fantasy setting” or “Wait, *that* is what he names her?” It is, in fact: He throws open the window of the attic he’s hiding in and shouts the name “Moon Child,” though he does so in such a garbled way that if you don’t know what he’s saying, you might think he’s saying “Monnanah” or “Morrorraiah” or something similarly wrong-seeming, though not exactly stranger or more surprising than “Moon Child.”
The mystery of why Bastian names her “Moon Child” and whether he’s naming her after his dead mother has lingered with me long enough that I supposed other children of the 1980s have also wondered about this. This post is my effort to collect all the information about it in one place. Feel free to point out anything that I’m missing.
If you have watched the 1984 movie adaptation of Michael Ende’s 1979 book, then you probably remember that Bastian — the human child reading a book called The Neverending Story in the fictional world of the movie, also called The Neverending Story — is tasked with saving a fantastical realm from destruction by giving its ruler, the Childlike Empress, a new name. Bastian is following along the adventures of Atreyu, the hero of the story he’s reading, and the viewer sees both timelines play out: Bastian reading and Atreyu performing the feats that Bastian reads about. When Atreyu finally reaches the Childlike Empress, she explains to him that it’s not Atreyu who must give her the new name but Bastian himself. This comes as a surprise to Bastian, who had not been a character in the book he was reading before this moment. The Childlike Empress now implores Bastian to say the name, and after some resistance, he announces it, though your mileage may vary regarding what you hear.
In my experience, many people don’t recall the new name being “Moon Child” and are surprised to find out this is the case. Even stranger, I have no memory of discussing this mystery back in the day. I’m certain I didn’t know he’s yelling “Moon Child” until I read the actual book my freshman year of college, but I can’t recall a single instance of anyone telling me during my grade school years that the name he picks is “Moon Child” in the way kids share precious, rare trivia points such as the Justin Bailey code in Metroid or the hidden penis in the VHS cover of The Little Mermaid.
At least on my part, the explanation for this incuriosity might be me being young and dumb and just not understanding the world. The movie has a few weird plot turns that didn’t necessarily make sense to me at the time, but being relatively new to being alive and therefore also new to watching movies, I didn’t necessarily know that any of this was unusual, if that makes sense. At one point, for example, the empress explains that Bastian has been following along Atreyu’s adventures in the same way that there are others who have been following Bastian’s journey, but at the time I didn’t understand that she was referring to me and anyone else watching the movie because I hadn’t yet encountered the concept of metafictional layers. I am not sure what I thought the empress was talking about. However, I didn’t understand much of what most adults talked about back then, so I may have just shrugged off confusing bits from movies the way I did confusing bits of real life. There are, after all, many things that children are not meant to understand.
The original German in which Michael Ende wrote the book — Die unendliche Geschicht, if we’re being technical — gives the empress’s new name as “Mondenkind” — the dative form of “Mondkind” because in German that case can make things sound more stylized, more old-fashioned, per this discussion, similar to the poetic difference between “Moon Child” and “Child of the Moon” in English. One person commenting says that perhaps the name makes sense in either language if you consider how the moon doesn’t shine its own light but merely reflects the sun, and similarly the Childlike Empress projects the fantasies of children such as Bastian but cannot re-create or re-invent herself on her own.
That linked discussion about the significance of “Moon Child” also makes a connection to Aleister Crowley because Ende possessed items relating to Thelema, the religious order Crowley started. In 1923, Crowley published his novel Moonchild, about a war between black and white mages and a woman being impregnated with an ethereal being called the moonchild. It is not the only connection between Ende and Crowley’s respective writings; both the book and movie versions of The Neverending Story feature the Auryn — a mystical medallion that, in the book, grants the wearer the power to become the main character, if I’m remembering correctly. The item is inscribed, depending on the English translation, with “Do what you wish” or “Find your true will,” and one of the central tenets of Thelema is “Do what thou wilt.”
“But wait,” you may be telling me, after having reached far back into your brain’s nostalgia department to recall the details of this movie you watched many a Blockbuster night ago, “doesn’t Bastian say that he’s giving the Childlike Empress his mom’s name?”
The answer is, again, complicated: Yes, it would certainly seem that way, but there’s also an argument for why this is not the case.
In the film, Atreyu learns that the empress needs a new name, and then the scene cuts away to Bastian reading about this scene, where he remarks, “What a shame they don't ask me. My mother, she had such a wonderful name.” And that would be a very strong indicator that the name Bastian eventually picks is, in fact, his dead mother’s name, but the film neither explicitly says that this is the case nor gives any information why his mother would have had such a strange name. Also, unless I’m mistaken, no version of this line exists in the book, which explains that Bastian’s mother died while being operated on in the hospital as a result of some unnamed affliction. I have this dumb headcanon that probably doesn’t hold up to scrutiny but which connects Bastian’s mother and the name he gives the empress because “moonchild” is in somes circle the term given to people born under the zodiac sign Cancer. I suspect this alternative to “Cancerian” exists as a result of the negative connotations we have with the non-astrological sense of cancer, though I cannot find a solid etymology for it. If Bastian’s mother died of cancer, I suppose there is some far reach of an explanation that uses “Moon Child” as some weird euphemism for the thing that took her away, but I can’t quite make it connect. Nonetheless, if we are talking about all the interpretations of this name, this is also one.
Points in favor of Bastian’s mom also being named “Moon Child,” for whatever reason, include this tweet by Tami Stronach, the actress who played the Childlike Empress in the first movie, posted upon being asked what Bastian’s mother’s name is: “Well, wonder no longer. Bastian’s mother’s name was ‘Moonchild!’” However, that same thread also includes tweets alleging that Wolfgang Petersen, the film’s director, has stated that no, Bastian’s mother was not named this and Bastian therefore doesn’t give the empress his mother’s name. I can’t find where Petersen said this, if he did say it, but the explanation for Bastian’s remark about his mother’s name earlier in the film is that he considered giving the empress his mom’s name — presumably a normal name, like Joan or Sherry or Calliope — and then changed his mind over the course of the movie, but I have no idea where that mental turn actually occurs. If you know, please tell me.
It may not surprise you that there is a fan theory about the name and why it’s so difficult to understand what Bastian yells out the window. Posting to a subreddit dedicated to fan theories, one person claims that some home video versions of The Neverending Story omit the subtitles in this scene. I don’t know if this is true. If it is, it might be an honest mistake, but it might also be a very David Lynch-like way of pushing viewers to interpret the movie in a way that is meaningful to them:
The entire movie is about the death of the imagination, and how as kids stop reading books, and stop imagining the worlds that are made up within, those worlds die. The Nothing is [a] lack of creativity and lack of care for fictional worlds. The Nothing is television, and movies, and apathy towards the make-believe. The Nothing is growing up, and losing the ability to even have an imagination. It's...well, it's nothing. It's the absence of something, in this case, creativity and imagination.
So, what's the Empress's name? Well, they leave that answer purposefully blank in the movie because they want you to decide. The movie forces you to use your imagination, and therefore brings you into the story, too.
I actually like this theory a great deal, if only because it answers the question of why the people making this movie would have heard the actor’s read on this crucial line and said, “Yeah, that’s good enough. We don’t need another take.” The original poster of this theory did not, however, know that the book the movie was based on spells the name right out.
This, as it stands now, is all I know about why Bastian names the Childlike Empress “Moon Child.” This is as much about this particular pop-cultural mystery that has been collected in one spot, as far as I know — and if you know a place that has more, please do tell me.
Since I’m on the subject of The Neverending Story, however, and I can’t imagine I will have the opportunity to write about it again at any point in the near future, I will point out one other thing about the title of these works. Given the fact that storytelling and creativity are at the heart of the plot, it stands to reason that the story referred to in the title is, in the big sense, the concept of human storytelling: taking stories and re-telling and re-interpreting them over time, and making them new stories. It is that, obviously. It has to be. There’s also something to the idea of the hero’s journey, taken by Atreyu in some sections and then, later, by Bastian himself, being a based on the core template for human stories that gets re-used again and again, in the Joseph Campbell sense. In fact, there are probably many more ways to interpret the title in the context of fiction, writing, narrative and all the things that Michael Ende was trying to teach young readers in creating this book.
In the book, however, a specific, literal never-ending story also exists. During this section, the focal character is actually the Childlike Empress rather than Bastian or Atreyu, because she gets a lot more of an active role in the book than she does in the first movie, at least. (Also, in the print editions of the book, the color of the ink changes to red or green depending on whether Bastian or Atreyu is the lead character, respectively, and — again, unless I’m mistaken — the Childlike Empress maybe gets purple text? It’s been a second and I couldn’t find the answer online.) In any case, she travels alone to meet the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, whose job it is to write down everything that happens and has ever happened, and he writes it in a book called The Neverending Story, meaning that The Neverending Story is a book in the fictional universe of The Neverending Story that Bastian reads, which is itself a fictional book in the universe of the book The Neverending Story that exists in our world. In fact, that first book may be the literal representation of the realm of Fantastica (called Fantasia in the movies). Once she arrives at his home, the Childlike Empress demands that the old man reads her this book — and he does so hesitatingly, beginning with the first words that begin the literal, real-life book version of The Neverending Story that the human reader is currently holding in their hands. It’s summarized in broad strokes until the point in the old man’s telling where the Childlike Empress arrives and demands that she tell him the entire story, at which point he starts the entire cycle over again. This, as far as the book is concerned, is the literal never-ending story that has now trapped all of its characters in an eternal loop.
It’s made clear to Bastian that the only way he can break this cycle is to use his human agency to intervene, at which point he exclaims, “Moon Child, I’m coming!” — which is both the book’s parallel for the scene in the movie I’ve been discussing this whole time as well as a plot point that for some reason makes the old man’s house explode, and also causes thunder to ring out and a great wind roars across the land. End of chapter.
The Neverending Story, especially in book form, is a rich text that has a lot to offer you, even if you were not a child of the 1980s who grew up watching the movie version. Do go check it out.
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