What's in a Name?

Everything if you ask me. It’s your identity, your personality, your confidence, your future. Some people don’t take it quite as seriously as I do; it’s just about having a cute name or the name you always loved. Sometimes, tho when you look at those names you find out that it means something awful.

In the quest for our child’s name, San Francisco and I found out that Brendan… as in Brendon Fraiser the cute actor…. means ‘smelly hair’ !!!! Can you believe that? Not that we were thinking about naming our kid Brendan, way to common for my taste, but still. There are a bunch of kids running around named Smelly Hair. The same thing with Trina…. Yes it’s a variation on Katrina, but in French ‘la trine’ is the toilet and that’s just too close for comfort.

I must say, naming Snot Face was so much easier. I didn’t really have to consult AND agree with anyone. My family had their input, but it was all my decision. I tend to like less traditional names, but strong and full of meaning. A name that will stand out in a stack of 100 resumes from various Johns, Julies, Davids and Dianas, but not quite as crazy as celebrity choices like Rumor or Apple.

San Francisco, however, likes the Johns and Dianas. Then there’s the input from friends and family. This gets hilarious, but is good to have. At one point I was considering Gaia for a girl (means earth in Greek). I think it’s gorgeous. My girlfriend is Samoan and she informed me that it sounds like the Samoan word for ‘shitty’. Taking into consideration that I live and interact with a lot of Samoans, I decided I’d better not use this one. Which makes me sad, but it’s best.

The flipside is that another rather outspoken girlfriend seems to have an aversion to ‘Ls’ and ‘Ss’ in boy’s names, she thinks it sounds weak. Well, all our choices for boys contain at least one or both of these letters, but she is set on getting me and San Francisco to move to her way of thinking…. Ain’t gonna happen! This short list was too hard for us to come up with.

My favorite family input came before we really started looking at names, from San Francisco’s mom during her visit. We were discussing types of names and where I got Snot Face’s, what about biblical?... heck no… how about my brother’s name… no, I don’t like naming after people….

“Really,” she said, “but if it was a boy, you would name it after his father, right?”
“No, Mamma Z, I would not.”

“Well, why not?” she got indignant, “I knew all along what his name was gonna be. What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing is wrong with it, Mamma Z,” and I repeated, “I just don’t like naming after people, it’s not original. Plus, it would get confusing around here.”

“I just don’t know what’s wrong with it? I think it’s a perfect name.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I had to get out of it, and then I thought... San Francisco has a dad and I piped in, “but what was wrong with Jerry?”