Naming people has always been a sacred tradition, meant to define them and particularly with small children to distinguish one from another. We name our pets so we can call them at night to the delight of our neighbors. Particularly with dogs, the longer the pedigree, the longer the name. This year’s winner of the Westminster show is “Vermilion’s Sea Breeze”. Let’s hope that old Sea Breeze was followed by a scooper or nobody’s going near that beach.
First, I think a short history lesson is in order, because the primary mission of this column is to inform and enlighten. Oh, maybe I hadn’t made that clear earlier. Many names, for example represented places of origin. Leonardo da Vinci was born in Vinci, although historical records indicate he might also have come from Anchiano, which serves both to confuse the issue and reflect well on Renaissance record-keeping. Certainly, Leonardo da Anchiano does not sound nearly as good, so my goes to sticking with Vinci. Probably that’s why Dante chose to use just his first name. We’ve of course discontinued that practice because, well, there are just too many people. Paul de Minneapolis, for example, wouldn’t work on a birth certificate, particularly if his parents were Mike da Detroit and Caitlin di Grand Rapids.
Popes get to choose their names, which I think is a really good idea. Pope John XXIII, so the story goes, wanted to rehabilitate the name John because John XXII was rather divisive and got on many people’s nerves in the 1300’s. Other popes selected names to honor people they greatly admired – Pope John Paul I, for example wanted to remember the two popes he followed, while Pope Francis takes great inspiration from St. Francis of Assisi. Some popes from centuries past, however, didn’t quite match their names. In particular, most of the thirteen popes named Innocent actually weren’t, some named Boniface, which is Latin for “doer of good”, didn’t, and quite a few named Pius weren’t terribly. One that has stood out in my mind is Sixtus V. Shouldn’t he more properly have been Pope Fifthus? The next one could really and truly have been Sixtus, but the expiration date on that papal name seems to have run out. Urban VI had to flee from Rome, taking the Papacy with him, so maybe he should have been Pope Suburban I.
Some names derived in the Middle Ages from interesting character traits – Rabbitfoot, for example being someone that could run fast (or perhaps had progeny all over the county), Fox designating someone wily or liked to be chased by folks wearing preposterous red blazers and oddly fitted white pants. Others depicted their careers and occupations. Smith, Cooper, Baker all denoted what folks did, although today’s names certainly wouldn’t work quite as well. Paula Occupational Therapist. Is Occupational a family name? Should it be hyphenated?. I can’t see names like Charles Venture-Capital, Mary Margaret Human-Resources, or Edgar Postal-Service catching on. Job names have become much too long and complex.
The British Royal Family, continuing to model all things appropriate, takes a straightforward approach to names, using good, solid, trusty names and lots of them. King Albert Frederick Arthur George (George VI) took over from his brother, Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (Edward VIII), who’s reign was considerably shorter than his name. Prince Charles has Arthur and George in his name as well, which was a bit confusing for the bride at his first royal wedding. But to their credit, there is a great cost saving for printing stationery and royal proclamations by recycling names. Pads of paper could be printed with “MEMO FROM THE DESK OF, with check off boxes for title: Queen, King, Prince, Princess, Prince Consort, and then a column listing names – Elizabeth, Charles, George, Mary, Katherine, William, Henry, Charlotte, Louis, Arthur, and others rounding out the top ten. The sender merely has to check off a couple of boxes rather than writing in the full names and titles and the notepaper can be ordered in bulk and used for generations.
The United States, being a melting pot, has assimilated naming from many parts of the world. It’s really too bad we didn’t annex Hawaii sooner, so we could have names like “Aloha”. Apparently, it means “loving person”, not “goodbye” as most of us thought. Perhaps native Hawaiians thought if they used it enough, we’d go away. From the UK, we get hyphenated names like Hyacinth Bucket’s famed nemesis, Mrs. Barker-Finch. The Spanish provide a fairly comprehensive ancestry by adding the conjunction, “y” after every third name, while the French add random silent letters, like all those l’s in Versailles and Marseilles, or “que” were a simple c or k would do the job. Many surnames from Scandinavian and Eastern European countries take a couple of false starts and a glottal stop to pronounce. For that reason, many that have migrated to the United States have modified their names over the years. They’ve changed to something that’s easier to remember and announce at the Academy Awards, like Illiana Lydia Petrovna Mironova, who became Helen Mirren. Russian diminutive names, curiously are often longer than the originals. I suppose there is a reason, like it’s quaintly adorable when uttered by a grandmother in a kerchief in a village in the Urals, but it does seem to run counter to the whole purpose of “diminutive”.
The period of my youth, the 1960’s, saw some really distinctive, original names. Parents of the Earth named their children Sunshine and its offspring, Sunshower, Sunbeam, and Moonbeam. It is my theory that naming a child Moonbeam really sets him / her up to be either a professional surfer or a sniper. A sixty-year-old Sunshower will almost guarantee a need for therapy at some point. One seldom sees a press conference where the new CEO of General Motors is announced: Prince Moonbeam Sunshine.
Recent years have seen many parents taking traditional names and making pathetic attempts to create originality. Some replaced all i’s with y’s, thought “ph” was too tricky and returned to “f”, or mixed and matched k’s and c’s. Thus, we had generations of Krystl, Ambyr, Fylyp, and Krystofer. Every so I often, I have had a parent tell me I’d misspelled their child’s name in a program. While apologizing profusely, I’d actually be thinking, “No, you did – I corrected it for you, you pretentious . . ..” A teacher friend told me of a student she had some years ago, with a name she pronounced, “fuh-MAH-lee”. When the teacher inquired about this unique name, she was told, “the hospital gave that name to my mother.” It turns out it was, wait for it . . . . . . the baby tag in the nursery, “female”. (That is a true story. I couldn’t possibly make it up.)
The more famous people become, the more bizarre the names they come up with for their children. Frank Zappa, the ultimate non-conformist, added his children’s names to the continuing list of the most non-conventional. We haven’t seen a Dweezil, a Moon Unit, or a Diva all that often since. Some famous parents, notably Michael Jackson and George Foreman, seemed to struggle for something appropriate, so they used the same name over and over with a number after it. Can you imagine the confusion at the DMV when applying for a driver’s license? On the plus side, it could keep identity thieves diverted for quite some time. We’re finding tree names like Maple and Apple, or colors like Blue Ivy and Pink Orchid popping up in the entertainment world. As smiling, happy children bouncing in the waves at an $8,000-a-night resort, this is adorable. But when they start applying for Social Security, the cuteness will be long gone.
Now we’ve entered into a new era of names, often in quotation marks. “The Situation” – what exactly does that mean? Does this person, appearing on television, create situations, react to situations, make situations worse, what exactly? Another performer has chosen to go by “Weeknd”. I’ll presume that’s not the name his parents came up with at birth. Again, I’m not totally clear on the concept here. Does he live for weekends, does he only work on weekends, what’s so special about the Saturday/Sunday combo for this person? Is he vowel phobic – no more than two “e’s” per word? Rappers tend to favor titles – Doctor or Grand Master are popular. Some are, apparently, really bad, thus becoming “Ludacris” or “Notorious”, while others are way cool as “Ice”, or even way cooler with single letters. The late musician Prince at one time found that name a bit too understated, so instead he created a unique symbol that couldn’t be said out loud, and he became simply “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”. I rather like that. I think from now on, I’m signing myself with a G clef, diagonal line through it with a plus sign on either side. Just so you’ll know, I’m now “The music teacher formerly known as Tom Walters”.
I'm Thinking...No! 