"The Names" is an Indian book, but not a book about wrongs done to Indians. It is a search and a celebration, a book of identities and sources. Momaday is the son of parents who successfully bridged the gulf between Indian and white ways, but remain Indian. In boyhood Momaday made the same choice, and in making it gave himself the task of discovering and in some degree inventing the tradition and history in which he finds his most profound sense of himself….

In the earlier "Way to the Rainy Mountain," Momaday's direction was from himself back to his father's tribe, the Kiowas, and the world they knew…. "The Names," focusing on Momaday and his family rather than on tribal folklore, is an extension of the earlier book. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, there is not much difference between identifying oneself with one's ancestors and identifying one's ancestors with oneself….

Momaday has not invented himself, as many Americans have tried to do. He has let the blood speak, looked for tracks, listened and remembered. Out of ordinary materials …, he has built a mystical, provocative book. He has pieced together a tradition and created his ancestors…. They empty like feeder streams into the river of his sensibility and awareness. He comes out of them….

[This] emergence is touched by the wonderful. A poet is at work upon himself. Identity and cultural belonging turn out to be inseparable but circular….

But the search, as Momaday is fully aware, cannot stop as a nostalgic journey backward, a discovery of origins. It must establish those and carry them into the future….

"The Names" is part of the quest. From it, the world lies wide open.