What's in a name?

Poststructural Pub
1

My family name was originally ‘Saslavsky,’ however at
Ellis Island circa 1900 this became ‘Saslav.’ Then somebody
decided to change it to ‘Saslaw,’ thereby making it
a name no English speaker could wrap his tongue
around. My parents, looking for something appropriately
messianic, named me ‘Shepard Ames Saslaw.’
Note that ‘Shepard’ isn’t spelled as one would
expect, a nice touch. The name is a standing
invitation to ‘Shepard Ames to Please!’
Also ‘Shep,’ which I was often called,
invites, ‘Shep the Schlep.’ This wasn’t lost on my
contemporaries. Just when I reached puberty
Elvis P. came out with that old favorite
‘When I was a boy and Shep was a pup.’

Above all, there was no way I could play right field
for the Yankees, one of my childhood aspirations.
Consider: ‘Here’s the pitch… I’ts a high fly to right
field. Shepard Ames Saslaw is going back, back…’
Hopeless.

As I grew older other difficulties emerged.
This was a common scenario:

"Alright, young man, the dentist will see you Tuesday at
ten AM. Now what’s your name?’

‘Shep.’

‘Skip.’

‘No, Shep. S, H, E, P. Shep.’

‘Alright, what’s your last name, Chuck?’

In my early thirties, having suffered enough (and there
being nobody left to care), I went to court and legally
changed my name to ‘Jim Stone.’ I dutifully notified
Social Security, got a new Social Security card
as ‘Jim Stone,’ got a new driver’s license, passport.
I had escaped, I thought.

I’ll be 62 this month, so I called Social Security
in Washington to arrange to begin collecting
benefits. After the lengthy wait,
I gave the lady on the other end
my social security number.

‘Yes, we’ll set up an appointment for you at your
local office, Chuck,’ she said.

‘I’m not Chuck. I’m Jim Stone.’

‘No you’re not. You’re Chuck Aims Shashaw.’

'I have my card before me as we speak. It says ‘Jim Stone.’

‘We have no record of that, Mr. Slaslaw.’

‘I’ve done my part, believe me please believe me,
I’m Jim Stone.’

‘You don’t get much of a pension from your university,
do you Chuck?’

‘Oh, about enough for a cardboard box outside of
Mexico City. It’s ‘Jim,’ by the way.’

‘Well, Chucky, due to new rules we deduct a percentage
of your pension from your social security benefits.
You will collect thirty-five cents a month. If you wait
till you’re 65, it will go up to a dollar fifty.’

‘It’s Jim. What am I going to do with thirty-five cents a month?’

‘Have you considered upgrading to plywood, Sheppy?
By the way, do you remember that Elvis had a song that went
‘When I was a boy and Shep was a pup’? You do aim to
please, don’t you?’

Please don’t let this happen to your child! best

2

I hate to say it, but I’ve already screwed up my youngest. His name is David Gabriel Clement, and he goes by Gabe. Unless he makes a change, he’s in for a lifetime of saying just that: “I go by Gabe.”
Oddly, because the name Gabe is somewhat uncommon, when we say “this is Gabe,” people often reply, “Dave?”

3

Our shop had a client whose last name was Pudlick. I kid you not. He was always in a bad mood. Imagine that.

What price, hewing to the family name! I wonder that he never changed it to spare himself the ignominy such a name would incur in the US. At least he might have done so for the sake of his children.

4

I had many of my childhood friends convinced that my middle initial “C” stood for Cheech. “They named me after their favorite actor” I would say. Worked well until they met my parents initially then they didn’t believe me unless they got to spend more time with my parents. Then the seeds of doubt crept back in.

Mark V.

I’ve doomed my daughter to annonymity by naming her Emily. We usually just use “Em”. That saves mom a little time. She can yell “Em Vanek get in here” in that voice that only mothers have and we both come running. Son was almost Calvin but my wife was a big Calvin and Hobbes fan and had vivid mental images of standing on the back steps yelling “CALVIN!” So his name is Ryan.

5

My parents decided to spare me anything weird, and named me John.

This also has its downside, as it’s the second most common first name in America, just behind James. There were once four of us in one high school classroom. I can’t very easily go by my last name, because it’s Polish and 10 letters long. Middle name’s Daniel, but it somehow doesn’t work for me as a first name.

6

Not too bad. My wife had a former coworker (a very nice Vietnamese girl) who was burdened with Dung as a given name.

My mother seemed to like adding a touch of unusual to names. My brothers and I were named (oldest to youngest, all male):

Dana Lee Crom
Cameron Charles Crom
Eric Kindel Crom

At least the youngest got a less-uncommon given name. But that middle name was sheer cruelty - he has flaming red hair. (Being called “Eric the Red” was bad enough. Imagine all the Kindel/kindle jokes he heard growing up.)

Middle brother thought he got off lightly, until he heard (true or not?) that “Cameron” means “Gourd Nose” in Scots Gaelic. And he does have a bit of a beak on him. . . :smiley:

My wife thinks this is all funny - she asked me if I wanted to name our firstborn (a girl) “Dana Lee Crom, Junior”. To be called “Junior”, of course. Much as I love her, that woman has a warped sense of humor. Good thing I didn’t give in - our daughter takes after my side of the family, anyway. At least (since she was 11 or so) nobody ever mistakes the kid for a boy.

7

Thelonius Monk was asked if kids in school made
fun of his first name. ‘No, that was too much for them,’
he said, ‘but they did call me monkey, and man, you
know that was a drag!’

8

That only applies to Emilys born after, say, 1990.
Try being an Emily born in '61, with a daughter named Olivia born in '90. People reverse our names on a regular basis.

9

Hey Jim, did you keep the middle name of Ames? That’s my middle name too, and my nephew’s as well. I was kind of embarrassed of it as a kid, but I kinda like it now.

My last name, however, is Rusche. I like it and all, but in my 35 years, 4 people have pronounced it correctly from having only seen it and not heard it, and one of those then pronounced it wrong the next day. (Nobody has ever been able to spell it from hearing it.) It’s pronounced ROO-shee. I get a lot of Roosh, Rush, Roo-SHAY (people seem to think it’s French, not German), and occassionally Roach. I have no idea where that last one comes from.

My dear and lovely wife decided to take on this challenging name when she married me, because her maiden name is Tyson, and she was sick of chicken jokes and “Is your brother Mike Tyson” jokes. Funny thing is, her brother’s name IS Michael…

Steven

10

Could have been worse, Jim. Frank Zappa named his kids Dweezil and Moon Unit. How perverse can you get? Faced with a choice between those two, which would you choose? He called the boy Dweezil and the girl Moon Unit but I know of no convention that dictated that one was for girls and the other boys.

11

You’ll get no sympathy here…

John Brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave…

John Brown’s baby had a cold upon his chest…

All of sudden, I see sheriff John Brown…

“Did you know there was a famous abolishonist name…John Brown?”

“No officer, I swear, that’s my real name…”

“can I see some ID please?..”

In Ireland…
“… John Browne”, no it’s B-R-O-W-N no E.

Regards,
jb

12

No, I jettisoned ‘Ames’ along with Shepard and Saslaw.
What joy!

There was a Brit named newton who named his kid
Hooten. Kid ran off, disgruntled,
and changed his first name to
Tooten.

John Brown, I feel your pain, but you didn’t have
to spell your name every last time you
ever used it! And people thought the first
name was spelled ‘Shepherd,’ the association
with sheep coming from the extraordinarily
popular third grade reader, ‘Shep the Farm Dog.’

13

I got off pretty easy with my name:

Alan Joseph Penney

The extra ‘e’ is the only problem. It’s the result of a mistake on my late grandfather’s birth certificate that wasn’t noticed until ten years later. By then nobody cared to change it back.

I do go by A.J., but that hasn’t proven to be a problem. Anyone who meets me in a social context only knows me as A.J. In fact, I think my doctor is the only person who still calls me Alan. It doesn’t bother me. I like Alan too. I considered going by Alan when I moved for university, but my friends wouldn’t let me.

A.J.

14

I don’t have a problem with my name, Anthony Joseph Higgins. I was named after St Anthony of Padua because my birthday fell close to his feast day. Common practice in Ireland at the time, I’m told. My parents didn’t want to breed resentment by naming me after one relative and not another. My immediate family still calls me Anthony, everyone else calls me Tony. My sisters and my mom pronounce it with a hard ‘t’- Antiny the way they do in Dublin. Only my mom has a Dublin accent. One of my sisters, Catherine, is addressed ‘Catrin’ and Mary is called Marry. My kids think it’s funny. Even my wife thinks it’s cute. Whatever. One of my cousins in Dublin is married to a guy named Poraig or something like that, pronounced ‘Porrig,’ one of the derivations of Patrick or Padraig. My 16yr old daughter says the name and shudders. “How could you have a name like that?” Names were never abbreviated in our house; Joseph was never named Joe or David, ‘Dave.’ It happened later on, of course. Something else my mom could not tolerate was calling someone a name like ‘pig.’ You could never insult someone by calling them an animal. When one of my kids calls the other one a pig for being greedy, I have flashbacks to my mom’s reaction. (The scars I’m left with.)
Tony

15

I feel sorry for Dweezil.

Yours truly,

Darvis (my real name…sorry) :smiley:

16

There was a former coworker who gave each of his three children (2 boys and a girl) first names that were totally random collections of syllables - his rationale was that they would NEVER be confused with anyone else. He did give them each a more-ordinary middle name so they would have something to fall back on.

But he wasn’t too sympathetic to the “odd name” argument - his parents had immigrated from the Netherlands when he was in his early teens, and nobody he met in the US was ever able to pronounce his own name (Maarten) to his complete satisfaction. Though I doubt he took too much teasing - he rather resembled (in body, not face) a silverback gorilla wearing a suit.

Of course, he had many other somewhat unusual ideas. I used to think that he never changed clothes; turned out he owned about half a dozen blue pinstripe suits (same material and cut) and all his shirts were white. He claimed it saved him a great deal of time in the morning - he always took the suit and shirt from the left side of the closet, and never had spend any time worrying if they went together.

A great guy, really - I should look him up. I’m curious whether the kids are still using the names he gave them, since by now they’re probably in their late 20s. (I know how I’d bet, though. He’s lucky if he didn’t live out the last part of “A Boy Named Sue”) :smiling_imp:

17

I’ve always been grateful that I had an older brother, because he’s the one who got stuck with “Clymer Lewis Wright, Jr.” He swore he’d never do such a thing to his kid, but guess who’s named “Clymer Lewis Wright, III”–and goes by “Buddy”. (An elderly aunt once sent us a Christmas card addressed to “Climber Wright and Family”.)

My father’s family came to Texas from Tennessee and Missouri, which must account for my grandmother and her sister being named “Mary Johnny” and “Jessie Mae”, respectively. My mother’s youngest brother was several years old before they decided on a name for him, so he was always known as “Son” to everyone in the family. His nieces and nephews even called him “Uncle Son”.

On the other hand, the vast majority of my cousins were named Robert (3), Thomas (2), or Jeff (two)–and one David. (Oddly enough, I don’t seem to have any female cousins.)

My father’s father was “Riley Wright”, but his stepfather was “Alpha Meyer Cohen”, which is a pretty heavy monicker for someone from East Texas.

Lots of folks have odd middle names. My favorite was a college roommate with “Swope” in the middle. I used to try to convince people that it was the past tense of “swoop” (as in swoop, swope, swopen).

I was given a simple “Michael Lee”, but when I joined the Army, one of the recruiters looked at my birth certificate and discovered that it had been entered as “Michal Lee”. The Army insisted that that was my legal name, and I figured it would at least be less common (and one less letter to write), so I’ve stuck with that spelling. “Michael L. Wright” is a surprisingly common name, so having an uncommon spelling has turned out to be useful on a couple of occassions. The only problem is that people can’t figure out how to pronounce it–and I’ve had a couple of people “correct” it on forms that I filled out.

18

I had a friend in college whose father was from South Africa. His name was Peter deKok. The irony just didn’t exist in Africaans.

Steven

19

Prior to my divorce, I was Janice Crewe (ex’s name)…my line used to be “It’s not just anyone who can be a catalogue!” Not only that, I ordered most of my clothes from J.Crew (still do),and I always thought that they should have given me some kind of a discount, but they never saw it that way!

Two other unrelated name items-A couple who were friends of my parents were named “Tony and Dawn Orlando.” They always sign their Christmas cards (you guessed it!) Tony Orlando and Dawn.

And I’ll never forget this from fourth grade Sunday School-my teacher’s name was Mrs. _ucker (I’m not kidding…all the little boys used to snicker, the rest of us were clueless). In retrospect, I’ve always wondered two things: 1) why she didn’t change her name, and 2) what her ancestors did for a living.

20

hahahaha…my god…that can’t be…and even SUNDAY SCHOOL…holy cow… :smiley: