A Rose by Any Other Name........

Titles for blog posts are a real challenge for me. Sometimes I come up with a clever title but then feel the pressure to write something that will live up to the name. It’s like when a mother names her kid Precious and then the kid turns out to be a holy terror. If she had only named her something like Maude or Mabel it would have lowered the expectation. I once knew of a little girl named Charisma……now talk about pressure. Just how much charisma can you expect from a 5 year old? I personally was always leery of naming a daughter Tina as I have always pictured girls named Tina as small and petite. There were two Tina’s in my 5th grade class. One was so little we called her Tiny Tina…….the other…..well, let’s just say Tiny was not an accurate synonym for her. I also think about little babies and names that they have to grow into, for instance the name Harold. I’ve never seen a baby that looked like a Harold. The name that really struck me recently was a newborn named Huck. At least the only Huck I can think of WAS a little boy so that helps. Now Ron’s real name is Ronald (which doesn’t sound like a baby name either) but there are so many versions of Ronald it works. When we were in grade school he was Ronnie. Of course it stuck and he was Ronnie all the way through high school as well. He didn’t break out into the adult version until he was in college where he became Ron.

When I was pregnant with my twins (before I knew there were 2 babies) I had already picked out the name Jamie for a girl since her dad was named Jimmy. But the day I learned I was expecting 2 babies instead of 1 really threw me into a spin. First there was the feeling of guilt that for 8 ½ months I didn’t know the child even existed and had only been dreaming about her sibling. Second, I had to come up with 2 more names, a boy’s and a girl’s. I didn’t want rhyming names but was ok with the first letter being the same. On the ride from the doctor’s office to my dad’s store I named the little stowaway Julie, after a very dear friend. But, another boy’s name just wasn’t rolling off my tongue. My original boy’s name was Michael David after two of my brothers. The second name was a struggle. My mother had always told me to test prospective baby names by yelling the name out the back door as if you are calling your child in for supper. My second name choice was Mark Alan….not for any reason except I like the name Alan. Since I knew Michael would probably be shortened to Mike I went to the back door and yelled Mike…Mark….hmmmmmmm not so good. It made me sound like a hair-lipped dog. But to save my soul I couldn’t come up with another choice so I just kept praying for girls. Hooray…..it worked! However, what I didn't realize was that no matter what you name your kids there is a good chance they won't like it anyway. Jamie has always accused me of naming her a boy's name. Julie just says, with a noted hint of sarcasm, "How original". I should have just kept the names they assigned in the hospital, #1 and #2. Ohhhh, that's like Dr. Seuss, Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Then they would have had something to complain about!