A Meditation on names

“I hate my name”, my new student said as I stumbled through a long and unfamiliar pronunciation. That’s always the way the first week or two goes for me. I hear it over and again, “Call me this”, or “Call me by that nickname”. Usually the nicknames are something silly they just made up like “Mango” or “Watermelon”. Naturally I will not pick them up as they gigglingly ask me to, their friends insisting that, yes, indeed, they do always go by Watermelon. I even capitalize it like a proper noun, giving it legitimacy perhaps.

But that is the tough thing about names. Call someone Watermelon long enough, it is who they identify as in some way. They embody our identity, but like our spoken voice when we hear it played back, it’s hated by so many.

“I can’t wait to change my last name” a young sophomore tells me during tutorial time at the end of the day. “It’ll go back to my mom’s name. I told my stepdad I hated his name and was going to go back…it didn’t go over well.” I just sat and listened. She already went by her old last name. Signed in on all her papers and confused me to no end until I asked once. The silly thing was I only had one person of her first name in that class. What was I expecting, a ghost name twin? She says all this about her name in a matter of fact tone that tells me that, yes, she will not reconsider for a second. I wonder if her old name, once new again will be favored in the long run.

Student name

Paul the Confusing

The Animal Name

I call my son Monkey. Actually, I think I call him that more than I call him by his given name, Simon. He has taken the persona on himself. His only stuffed animals he hasn’t given to the dog to worry about the backyard are monkeys. He has begun to wander around the house eating the palm of his hand saying he is holding bananas. He is three and I assume partly that this behavior is appropriate to a confusing three-year-old. He says he is eating a banana but giggles as he eats his hand and makes us do it too as he feeds his banana to his stuffed monkey named strangely, Simon Monkey. I wonder how long the monkey behavior will last. Hopefully late into his teens so I get to tease him and give him a good and legitimate reason why girls continually friend-zone him. I wonder how he would have acted were we to call him Hippo or Giraffe or puppy. Would his name bleed into what he sees in himself and would I then see him wandering around on all fours pretending to eat leaves from the tallest trees, or attack fishing boats seemingly irrationally with his overly large jaws?

To me, he looks like a Simon, but what does that even point to? Will he, later on down the road view his own name with distain and tell some teacher, “I hate my name” when they call on him for the first time? With baby number 2 on the way, considering who she will be called before she even has the opportunity to be seen is a thought that fills me with some level of angst. I think he looks like a Simon, but does he?

I am from mountains

From retreating glaciers and snowfields lost

From snow lingering for three more months

from granite which forced itself up to us

making itself known and foundational

I am from fall afternoons by a stained porcelain sink peeling pears

I ate the skins as they were peeled before they oxidized

Though I didn’t know that word then

I am from blackbears cautiously crossing the road before us

Bounding away like rolling stones and a mess of pistons firing in all directions

I am from books, Plato, Homer, Luther, Plath, Dickins, Bulfinch

I am from humble and small beginnings both in name and place

From “don’t say I didn’t warn you” and"I told you so"

From pipe smoke choking the basement workshop

But then the pipesmoke and the anguished glances died away and seeped into the wood

The glaciers retreated and became snowfields

The snow came less and less often until the brown of grass was all the white we got for presents

Now, I am from perpetual green and trash heaped along the roadside

where the eyes of the unfortunates on roadsides are all we don't look at

Their names, the only thing we don't bother to ask before judging

From moss and blackberry that covers all trace, in time

I want to say I am still from humble surroundings in name and place, but I’m not sure

How much can we allow of change through the decades?

The Token Poem

Meaning

My name means “small” or “humble”. I have been accused of neither of those things though I certainly wish I had been. Honestly, I never really think about the implications of the meaning of my name. I am not sure if many of us do on a regular basis. I don’t think that I have ever asked myself how I live up to the meaning of my name, though it being a virtue, perhaps I should. I wonder if any Cassandras claim to be true “entanglers of men”. Not once have I ever seen a Cassandra and thought, what a spidery looking person, and I am sure no Cassandra has ever been spidery. However, I am sure there have been some entanglers within the ranks. Kennedy means “Helmet head” according to some sources. The obvious irony aside, I think Jackie O’s wonderful hairdos lived up to the name quite well. I imagine that parents in the 70’s reconsidered the use of Randy as a name, at least in Britain (thanks Austin Powers). The point here is that names are not the end all be all of one…no, not really actually I just googled some funny name meanings and the real point of this exercise is to laugh at the truly ridiculous meaning of some names while thinking about why we chose to consider the meaing before our choices. Paul Michael Warmbier means humble like god beer maker (and hopefully drinker). Whatever that makes me, I'll take it.