What's in a Name? The Possibilities are Endless...

This month’s topic- “What’s in a Name?”- will wrap up on Thursday with a “media night” discussion on the movie “Sommersby”. Watch it prior to Thursday if you can.

Today’s entry is simply random thoughts regarding naming that I find interesting to think about.

Boxer George Foreman named all four of his sons “George”. He once joked that this cleaned the slate from his accidentally calling someone by the wrong name. “Sting” and “Madonna” and “Cher” and a few non-celebrities I know of have renamed or defined themselves with a single name. What does it mean to present oneself this way? Does a single name stand apart, above, or beyond? (“God” doesn’t have a surname either.)

Some names sound like “brands”? Blade, Desire, P Diddy, Eminem. Does a brand name sort of make you a superhero?

I have a friend who named his dog Gi-li, pronounced "Gill'ee," the Cherokee word for “dog”. Essentially, he named his dog “Dog”. This bothers me for some reason.

I read about a study that followed trends in naming among Asians new to America. Words that had phonetics similar to their native languages often became their children’s (unusual) names. “Jackyl” was among the most popular. I imagine that the “Jackyls’” parents may have later regretted not doing more name-meaning research. And maybe the time came, especially for the boys, when having the “brand” of Jackyl was a good thing.

In a recent blog I mentioned a man I knew of whose last name was “Queer”. As you’d predict, he endured a lifetime of razzing over his name. When asked why he didn’t just change his name, he answered, “Well, because my father was a Queer, and his father was a Queer, and his father before that....”.

Finally, there’s my cousin, Brian James Donald Duff. His parents felt that the two middle names were too important for either to be left out. Brian, with his uncommonly long name, recently married. He and his wife are "progressive," creative folks, and they decided that as a couple they should merge and share both of their last names. My cousin is now Brian James Donald Grace-Duff. (Wonder how many names their kids will have...?)