Names with meaning
A couple of notes. Lewis Black, in his Carnegie Hall performance, tells of a friend who was a social worker who handled an odd case. Apparently, the parents of one young girl wanted a rhythmic name for their child, and chose what works out to
shi-THAY-uh. And her middle name was something normal, like Denise or Danielle. But the problem was the cruelty of the name. The social worker's file on the child read,
Smith, Shithea D.
It's one of those jokes I'm hesitant to call true, except it's so well within the bounds of possibility. To the other, my grandfather once attended a preacher named Rev. Perry Winkle.
When my former partner was pregnant with our daughter, she assigned me to pick a name. I came up with five, wanting the names to be unique, aesthetic, and in some way meaningful. They were:
• Najam Nadira ("rare star", "precious star")
• Amala Levana ("hopeful moon")
• Ceres Ananda ("fertile bliss", "growing bliss")
• Tifareth Viridis ("beautiful green", "balanced green")
• Grace Katharine (okay, no special meaning here, but a longstanding preference from the first time I ever answered the question, "What would you name your child?" A son, by that reckoning, would have been Shaw LaRocque, named after members of King Diamond's band.)
Grace Katharine was rejected because my partner felt it had too much association to a former girlfriend, my high school sweetheart. I
suppose that's fair. Or, rather, I can see how that works.
But the others were rejected on the grounds that they were too unusual. Our daughter would be teased and beaten for having an Arabic-sounding name, or for having a hippie name, or whatever. So my partner proposed the name "Emma Claire", which was altogether too common for me. (Indeed, "Emma" was among the top ten names for girls in 2002, as it turns out.) I suggested a compromise: Emma Grace as the first name, and de Cleyre as the middle. My partner agreed to the name, allegedly as a stand-by in case I didn't come up with anything else. I tried, but within a few days I discovered that "stand-by" was the code word for "the name we're going with come hell or high water". So that's how it worked out.
Of course, I also came up with two absolutely hippie names—Kamea Maya and Rhythm Erthe—but neither of these did I really expect to stick. Kamea Maya was a nod to a television show, and I had already ruled out TV names. Rhythm Erthe I liked simply because it had a good sound and the second name comes from an old poem that I adore.
The name we went with derives from two Anarchists (Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre) and my maternal grandmother (Grace).
It's not that I resent my daughter's name in any way, but I just don't understand the idea of telling me to pick a name when my partner already had it in mind that nothing I picked was going to work. She already knew my philosophy on naming. What was the point, then?
I've bitched about this before ... a
couple times. Still, I just don't understand the need to give your kid a name like everyone else:
I'm ready to bargain on the name "Emma", which I would not have considered for a first name until the mother suggested it, but I highly doubt that I would get my way to name a child Emma Cleyre simply because of where the name comes from.°
But forgive me if I seek to avoid Emily, Michelle, Sydney, and so forth. The obscurity of "Tifareth" isn't so much problematic as is the fact that it would shorten to "Tif", and if there's one piece of harmony between us, it's that neither of us would wish such a moniker on a child. Were it a son, I would seek to avoid John, Bill, Ed, Mike, Mark, Jason, and other common names. Try sitting around smoking dope and drinking beer in a room where there's four of you responding to the same name ....
.... What crushes me is that a friend just called with a vote for Ceres Ananda ... thankfully, she did not suggest any names; I can't quite describe her sense of taste, though I'm somehow not surprised that her world is filled with Amys, Sherris, Alisons, Cheryls, Jamies, and other such names of common use. It's not that I have anything against any one name per se, except that as I deal with more and more common names, I start asking myself,
Why not name the child TK-421?
(June 22, 2002)
You see? I
can be wrong, sometimes.
I mean, my name is Brian. My best friends anywhere is John, Corrie, and Mo. My brother is named Drew. The mother of my child is named Jennifer. My parents have common names, Tigger's (Jennifer) parents have common names. Looking through the family, there are now at least three Jim's, a David, a Daniel, a Heidi, a Laurie, a Sue, a Chris (female), a Jeff ... I mean, Tigger has even suggested "Nicole", which name I object to on two grounds; (A) it's common, (B) we both, in our history together, slept with Nicole. (I mean, come on ....) A bunch of people I know have started to call each other random names in order to break the monotony: there's The Goat (a friend of a friend), Doctor Nick, Wiz, J-Love, A-B-A (Abie-ay), Dragon, Jhereg (despite my Sciforums handle, that's me), Coriander, Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, Alley Cat, and "Lester" (don't ask, it's a long story).
My fantasy football league? Brian, Drew, Chris, Brandon, Abe, Scott, Trevor, Dave, Tony, Sharon. (Sharon has no funny nickname yet, I don't know if Chris has one, and Scott's pet name comes from another social circle with which I am not acquainted.)
We even have a "Slim Shady" in our midst (Bob).
(September 19, 2002)
Oh, and it turns out that Chris' nickname was, and still is to this day,
Spic.
I just don't see what's so wrong about giving a child a name that actually
means something. Hell, a friend of mine, a theologian, gave her two daughters four names. First name, middle name, second middle name, and family name. And it was the second middle names that caught everyone's attention, as "Bringer of Light" and "Bringer of Joy" appear on the birth certificates. Absolutely beautiful.
