When we were naming Sam, Joy and I went through numerous possibilities and tried to think of every eventuality. We imagined calling a name from the back porch, hearing it read at graduation, and the derivatives that young boys would use in making fun of our son. An example - for a long time we wanted to name any son we had Jackson, but Joy and I both thought that carrying on the family name Samuel was also important. As you can imagine, Joy quickly nixed my idea of naming our unborn child Samuel Jackson.
We scoured the internet, playing with fun toys my brother showed us like the Baby Name Wizard's Name Voyager where you can track the popularity of any given name. We read articles forwarded to us by friends about how names migrate down the socioeconomic ladder and the implications of a name on our child's future success. We tried out numerous combinations, searching for the perfect name.
In other words, we drove ourselves a little silly.
This fanaticism is common, I've come to discover, but I've also found that once parents settle on a name, there is little you can do to change their minds. The name becomes that child's. Joy and I often remark on how Sam's name fits him. What does that statement really mean? Nothing beyond how pleased we are with the name we've chosen, that we feel it works for our son. We're glad we named him what we did.
So, with that background, I wasn't too surprised to see this little news item in the paper this morning. It seems that when a New Zealand couple first saw their baby on an ultrasound, they realized their baby was "for real" and so named him on the spot. They christened him "4Real." Only problem with that name? The New Zealand Government Registry does not allow names with a digit in them. What's a determined couple to do?
Register the child as "Superman" and keep calling him "4Real." The Telegraph's article on this story includes many odd children's names, including the extremely close Kal-el Coppola, son of Nicholas Cage. We do have a tendency to be tenacious about the names we decide upon, don't we. It got me thinking, what are some of the strangest names you've come across? Many of you are teachers, and I'm sure you've stories to tell. 4Real!
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2 comments:
I'll have to think on this and come up with some others I've heard, but my favorite, one I always remember, I came across when I was doing my student teaching in El Dorado. I had a student named Chris. Common name, I know, except that it was short for his legal name, Qwristaunopher. No that's NOT a typo.
As someone who has not yet named my own children who are arriving in a month or so, I can relate to some of this. I suppose seeing little Solstice and Equinox graduate and walk across to get their higher ed degrees might make Matt and I look like hippies (which would be fine only if we actually were hippies!), so we were forced to reject those names. My mom was an inner-city school nurse and came home with the best student names: Tajma (guess her 4 letter, very common last name?), Gonorrhea (this is so mean), and Female (pronounced fa-MAL-i, apparently, the mom thought the name the doctor gave her daughter was so pretty, she was all set)! I had a student named Tavaris and one named Kreighton, which I always thought were really cool names.
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