Names

I’ve been reading with some amusement the recent headlines about baby names.  It seems that, as happens a couple of times a year, new stats on baby-name popularity have been released, and that affords people an opportunity to let loose with their own “rules” of naming.  Nothing with alternate spellings, nothing too popular, nothing too unusual, nothing that’s a noun, etc.

We’d rather not run into trouble naming our kids something that their Southern grandparents, their Low-German grandparents, or their British playmates find unpronounceable or ugly (I’m still miffed that my Spanish teacher said “Erin?  Really?” with such a look of bafflement), but the world is big and it’s a bit difficult satisfying all of those requirements.  Not to mention that, when I mentioned possible names to my parents when I was pregnant with Katherine, I was amused to see alternating looks of pleasant surprise and distaste cross their faces–as in, they never had the same expression about a particular name.  And that’s just two people!

It would be nice to name our children after family members, particularly those who are no longer with us, but even if I did so I’d rarely hear my child’s name pronounced the same way as that of the family member–a difference of languages, accents, and the passing years.  I am always glad to hear that someone has named her son David after his fiery great-grandfather, because I think family ties are important, but when it comes to naming my own children I think I’d be as apt to be reminded of the differences as much as the inheritance.  Similarity works in interesting ways when you have been trained to think like a literature student 🙂

I always thought I’d be really into naming.  I mean, I spent months mulling over names for pets (or potential pets) as a kid.  I’ll admit that one of the things I first liked about Sydney was his name (well done, Dora!).  And I work with literature for a living: rife with names, many of which mean particular things that are significant within the novels themselves, or as a result of those novels’ publication.  Several names from literature have particular ties to my own work (Clarissa of Mrs. Dalloway or Quentin of The Sound and the Fury).  But I also know that my associations with those names can change, do change, with each month I work with them, and I am tied to no literary character like I am to my own child.  So, at least for me, any initial significance of a name will be seriously outweighed in about two months.

Nor am I keen on giving my kid a name that ties him or her to a particular story that’s already been told.  Some names–Emma, for example–might be both prominent enough in literature (oh, Jane Austen, what an influence you’ve had on the naming world!) and common enough that you can get both variety and significance in one name.  But I want to make sure there’s room for my kid to grow up as something other than the deeply-flawed Emma of Austen’s novel.  Besides, we’ll never have as much money as the character had–or social influence–so it’s best not to start out life disappointed!  And I have no intentions of dying off so that my Emma could grow up as the sole woman of the house, etc.

What I do know is that, once we’ve picked a name and attached it to a new person, it will, in our world and in the worlds of those close to us, be the tag for “our kid.”  And then, once enough of a personality emerges (Day 2?), the child will make its own imprint on the name.  We’re hoping that Katherine will assert her teenage independence by announcing that she’d like to be called “Kate,” rather than by piercing something.  Wishful thinking, perhaps.

When we named Katherine we did so with a cluster of other names nearby, hoping we’d be able to give her a sibling at some point down the road.  Not a family-size-determining group, but just a cluster; Sydney suggested we name our firstborn “Eight” and see what kind of a reaction we got, but I vetoed that one.  When I’ve been asked if I’ll name my child after a character in Faulkner or Woolf, I reminded people that some of the most prominent characters are scoundrels, others are crazy, and still others are dead (and rotting!).  If you look around a bit more you just get names that would be better-suited to cows: “Eula” and “Buela,” anyone?

So, yes, we’re still working with the same list, but, as with Katherine, I’m not pinning anything on someone I haven’t met yet!  I should remember to take the list to the delivery unit, though . . .

Erin