The names of "Mountainhead"
The title is an obvious Ayn Rand reference. But what about the characters' names?
Mountainhead, the new HBO drama-farce from writer/director Jesse Armstrong (Succession, In the Loop, The Thick of It), could almost be the next-gen Silicon Valley (2014–2019). This time around, the tech bros aren’t growing up and starting up; they’re making bank and flaming out. All but one of the four are members of the three-commas club; the fourth, their eager-to-please host, has a net worth of a mere $500 million or so. As they nosh and banter in a posh Utah aerie — the Mountainhead of the title — the world is literally burning, thanks to the chaos wrought by the social media platform created by the richest bro at the party (and the world): a hyped-up, Roman-empire-obsessed young mogul named, preposterously, Venis Parish.
I enjoyed a lot about Mountainhead, not least its blustering, jargon-spewing dialogue: “Galaxy brain.” “P(doom).” “The 4-sigma IQ move.” “I grin-fucked him.” “A ton of big, big learnings.” And maybe my favorite, spoken by poor centimillionaire Hugo “Soup Kitchen” Van Yalk about his “lifestyle” app on life support: “The burn rate’s horrible. All the revenue’s from people who fucking forget to cancel.”
But I’ll leave further talk about dialogue, plot, and motivations to others. (Here, for example, is a gift link to Charlie Warzel’s interview with Jesse Armstrong.) As my contribution to the discourse, I want to take a deeper look at some of those names. Revelatory? Symbolic? Objects of ridicule? Let’s find out.
Mountainhead
Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman) has named his bleak, toy-filled mansion as an homage to Ayn Rand’s 1943 Objectivist text The Fountainhead. One character even ribs him about it: “Was your interior decorator Ayn Bland?” The reference reminded me that many contemporary masters of the universe seem to have read only one book and can’t stop quoting it. In the case of Peter Thiel, for example, that book is The Lord of the Rings: All of his companies’ names — Palantir, Anduril, et al. — are drawn from Tolkien.
Brewsters
The four tech founders who meet at Mountainhead call themselves the Brewsters, a name whose backstory is never revealed. How about this: Brewster McCloud, Robert Altman’s 1970 black comedy about a recluse who lives under the Houston Astrodome. Or Brewster’s Millions, a 1902 novel remade many times for stage and screen, including a 1985 Richard Pryor vehicle. (A 2025 remake would need to be retitled Brewster’s Billions.) For those in the know — as techfolk certainly would be — “Brewster” is also Brewster Lurton Kahle, an early internet centimillionaire and the founder of the Internet Archive.
Or the Brewster boys could simply be fond of beer.
Venis Parish
In the subscriber chat, Anthony Shore pointed out that “Venis Parish” could be spoonerized to “Penis Varish”: “Venis is penis. There I said it.” It’s Venis-rhymes-with-menace, not Venis-rhymes-with-penis, but the extra meaning is right there for the extrapolating. (The meanings are a sort of Venn diagram, and “Ven Diagram” is in fact the nickname his pals have bestowed on Venis.) And Parish? A homophone of perish, of course, which could be the fate of the world’s population, seen in screenshots amid flames and riots. I wonder whether the character, played in the film by Cory Michael Smith, has a middle initial that begins with I, because he’s definitely a Very Important Person in his own eyes.
Traam
The name of Parish’s X-like social media platform, which claims 4 billion users, could be one of those extra-letter coinages like Fiverr or Reddit: TRAM with an extra A. Here’s Anthony Shore again: “Tram is a fine tech company name and idea, and that second ‘a’ makes it bit more unique and a lot more Dutch (which is neither here nor there.)” Here’s my own take: TRAAM is a real acronym for “Time Reference Angle of Arrival Measurement.” There's a British band called TRAAMS; the S stands for “system.” (“I think we pinched [the name] from a book about aviation,” lead singer Stu Hopkin told an interviewer.) Does it make sense? Maybe not, but it’s worthily nerdy.
Sabre
This is the name of Parish’s infant son, who makes a tiny, pitiful appearance late in the film. Of course an asshole like Parish would name his kid after an early-modern weapon (and give it the British spelling), unless the name comes from Sabre the (real) travel-logistics company film. Either way, this is baby-naming-as-branding, aka hubris.
Hugo Van Yalk
No one calls him “Hugo”; he’s always “Soup” (for Soup Kitchen, because he’s so relatively impoverished), “Souperman,” or some other variant. The “Van” adds a touch of faux aristocracy, while “Yalk” is just dopey: It evokes yolk and yawp and yawn and yak and yuck — nothing with a positive association. This name says: I am someone to be mocked and pitied.
Jeff Abredazi
I’m not sure what to make of this character name other than “Jeff” suggesting Bezos (whom this character, played by Ramy Youssef, does not resemble). The surname suggests the nonspecific “Arab world.” (Youssef’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt.) The name also has an incantatory sound, like “abracadabra” — is the arc of this “usurper” character somehow magical? No spoilers from me!
Bilter
Abredazi’s AI-detection tool is the anti-Traam; its name ironically suggests “builder” or “built ’er” when in fact it’s an un-builder. It could also suggest “bilk”: As Abredeazi observes, the worse things get (thanks to Traam’s malign effects), the rosier the profit outlook for Bilter.
Slowzo
Hugo Van Yalk’s claim to tech fame is a “lifestyle” relaxation app; its name appears to be a blend of “slow” and “zone.” Unlike Traam and Bilter, this name is descriptive, which means it’s more obvious, less cool, and less legally desirable. And slow? In the age of moving fast and breaking things, slow is a liability.
Randall Garrett
The elder statesman of the group, Garrett (Steve Carell) was an early investor in Venis Parish’s company, but doesn’t appear to have created anything of his own. (He is, however, absurdly proud of his 200 IQ, which he has embroidered on the sleeve of his sweater.) He’s in denial of a terminal-cancer diagnosis, which, like so many real-world tech superstars, he expects to beat through life extension or brain upload or whatever. His name? A bland, Anglo, two-trochee cipher. Could “Garrett” imply that he’s living “upstairs,” in the garret of his (supposedly) massive brain? Maybe. Does the frequently invoked nickname “Randy” imply a thriving libido? If so, it isn’t in evidence.
Hester
It can hardly be a coincidence that Jeff’s polyamorous girlfriend — she’s jetting off to an orgy while he’s at Mountainhead — has the same name as the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter. She’s just as indifferent to public opinion as Hawthorne’s heroine. I can’t wait to see her take over the whole operation.
And I can’t resist mentioning one last name, a real one: Jill Footlick, an executive producer and unit production manager on the film. That is an absolutely spectacular surname.
Read the TV Tropes breakdown of Mountainhead’s tropes, including Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, Halfway Plot Switch, and Butt-Monkey.
Want more character-name analysis? Read my take on the names of Ex Machina, Alex Garland’s 2015 sci-fi thriller (gift link).
I love your name games, but I must confess I am not drawn to stories about obscenely rich dorks.
This is by far the best thing I've read about Mountainhead.