Friday, March 05, 2004
naming
I grew up hating my name. I was born an Amy during a year when every fourth female child was named either Jennifer or Amy. There were four Amys in my kindergarten class. Which meant, I had to be known as “Amy M.” I hated being “Amy M.” It was insulting. Even worse than "Amy M.", one year there were two "Amy M.'s". For the entire, miserable year, I got called by my first and middle name. My middle name is “Lou”. "Lou" is not a girls name. "Lou" reminds me of a fat, balding middle-aged man who spends alot of time in a recliner. "Lou" is the beginning of the name of a disease. I was forced to go around being called “Amy Lou”. I had to write "Amy Lou" on my papers. It was horrible.
The year I was “Amy Lou”, my mom sent away for a free iron-on kit from Chicken of the Sea tuna. I was really psyched about this - because I thought that the Chicken of the Sea mermaid was fabulous. I have always loved mermaids. I was so excited to get a mermaid shirt of my own. The kit also came with letters to add your name to the shirt. My mother put the mermaid on my little white tank top, and right above it she put the words “Amy Lou”. I was mortified. The name “Lou” was just the antithesis of all things mermaid. I hated that shirt. Unfortunately, after all her tuna-wrapper saving, my mom was very invested in the shirt and she made me wear it to school. It got lots of compliments. I recieved them with scorn and distrust.
When I got to be in high school, I started being called by the distinguishing title of “little” Amy. I was short and skinny - weighing around 90 pounds in the ninth grade - so I was invariably the smallest Amy in class. “Little Amy” I became. It sucked.
I asked my mother once why she named me Amy. I was hoping she had a really thoughtful story for me - a reason to embrace and claim my given name. Her response was “it seemed old-fashioned at the time”. Okay then. She named me the most popular name of 1970 because “it seemed old fashioned”.
What I wanted was an original name, a name that reflected the person I was. Not a name shared by ten million other girls. Not a name that had to be modified so that I could be told apart. I wanted a name like “Amina”, or “Felicity Anna”. For a while, as a very young child, I wanted the name “Tracy” because I thought it sounded like the word “erase” and I had this fantasy of having the teacher say “Tracy, could you erase-y the board?”. This was before I started kindergarten. Back when I still fantasized about school. (In my fantasy I wore a little blue and red plaid dress and got to be the teacher’s helper all the time).
By the time I got into college, things were a little better. Once I was not corralled into classes full of females born in 1970, my name became more distinctive. Now, I am usually the only Amy in a room. I like it that way. I like not having to come up with an epitaph to distinguish me from all the other Amy’s. I am more comfortable with my name. Especially since I got married and was able to drop the ghastly “Lou” .
Perhaps it is because of my own trials with my name; perhaps it is because I have literature in my blood - but I have always been obsessed with naming. I used to write stories in large part so that I could name the characters. I always loved baby name books, with all their cool names and meanings. I poured over them when I was baby-sitting. I kept lists of names to use when I wrote.
It is somewhat ironic then, that my firstborn child was named off of a road sign.
I always knew what I would name a daughter. Lily - after Colin’s mother in The Secret Garden - the woman who loved a hunchback and had him build her a locked garden of her own, and Katherine, after my grandmother - who was the youngest of five daughters whose mother died in childbirth and whose father was the town drunk. My grandmother grew up sleeping in abandoned cars, making dolls out of corn husks. Katy Miller married at sixteen and had two sons who both became preachers. My girl name was in the bag: “Lily Katherine”. Compassion. Beauty. Strength.
I put off finding a boy name until I had my ultrasound and saw the little penis there - just demanding a name. It took a while to get over the shock that I actually had a boy child inside of me. That I was growing a boy with all the boy parts and boy-ish-ness actually inside of my body. I don’t know if this is common to all women or not, but for me at least - I just always assumed that my girl body would make little girl babies. I mean I knew that women (obviously) have boy babies - it just did not feel like it was possible on a personal level to actually give birth to someone of the opposite sex. As a result, I was in denial about naming a boy.
When I started to look for a name, I discovered that the options in boy names are very limited. I did not want a popular name. I did not want a normal, everyday name. Even worse, many of the boy names that I kind of liked were being adopted and stolen by the mothers of girls. Riley, Bailey, Ryan, Zoe (Zooey) - all these were becoming known as girl names.
I turned to literature. These are the names I considered, but did not name my son: Walden, Holden, Henry (from The Secret History), Simon, and Radley with a nickname of “Boo” (you have to admit - that would have been cool - my only fear was that I felt it may doom him to being a wild partier - “Hey!!! It’s BOO!!!!!”). My pregnancy progressed. I had no name.
My husband and I were driving to Georgia from Tennessee and we were going through North Carolina. I was depressed over my lack of naming ability. I started calling out road signs “Hey, we could name him Hardees - or maybe Texaco?” - it was a joke. Then we passed a sign to a little town called “Arden”. “We could call him ‘Arden’”, I said. I paused. Wait a second. I liked the way that sounded. “Arden”. It felt right. It felt just right.
I had to look in about ten baby name books before I found it listed as a “real” name with a meaning. It meant “passionate”. I loved it. My son had a name. My son has a name. His name means “passionate”. His name is one-of-a-kind. His name is a name of rolling hills, of trees that turn colors, of green. His name is a spot between the mountains and the valleys. It bridges the distance between home and away. His name is perfect. I found the perfect name. If I give him nothing else, I have given him this.
From Margaret Atwood’s poem “Spelling”
This is a metaphor.
*
How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.
The year I was “Amy Lou”, my mom sent away for a free iron-on kit from Chicken of the Sea tuna. I was really psyched about this - because I thought that the Chicken of the Sea mermaid was fabulous. I have always loved mermaids. I was so excited to get a mermaid shirt of my own. The kit also came with letters to add your name to the shirt. My mother put the mermaid on my little white tank top, and right above it she put the words “Amy Lou”. I was mortified. The name “Lou” was just the antithesis of all things mermaid. I hated that shirt. Unfortunately, after all her tuna-wrapper saving, my mom was very invested in the shirt and she made me wear it to school. It got lots of compliments. I recieved them with scorn and distrust.
When I got to be in high school, I started being called by the distinguishing title of “little” Amy. I was short and skinny - weighing around 90 pounds in the ninth grade - so I was invariably the smallest Amy in class. “Little Amy” I became. It sucked.
I asked my mother once why she named me Amy. I was hoping she had a really thoughtful story for me - a reason to embrace and claim my given name. Her response was “it seemed old-fashioned at the time”. Okay then. She named me the most popular name of 1970 because “it seemed old fashioned”.
What I wanted was an original name, a name that reflected the person I was. Not a name shared by ten million other girls. Not a name that had to be modified so that I could be told apart. I wanted a name like “Amina”, or “Felicity Anna”. For a while, as a very young child, I wanted the name “Tracy” because I thought it sounded like the word “erase” and I had this fantasy of having the teacher say “Tracy, could you erase-y the board?”. This was before I started kindergarten. Back when I still fantasized about school. (In my fantasy I wore a little blue and red plaid dress and got to be the teacher’s helper all the time).
By the time I got into college, things were a little better. Once I was not corralled into classes full of females born in 1970, my name became more distinctive. Now, I am usually the only Amy in a room. I like it that way. I like not having to come up with an epitaph to distinguish me from all the other Amy’s. I am more comfortable with my name. Especially since I got married and was able to drop the ghastly “Lou” .
Perhaps it is because of my own trials with my name; perhaps it is because I have literature in my blood - but I have always been obsessed with naming. I used to write stories in large part so that I could name the characters. I always loved baby name books, with all their cool names and meanings. I poured over them when I was baby-sitting. I kept lists of names to use when I wrote.
It is somewhat ironic then, that my firstborn child was named off of a road sign.
I always knew what I would name a daughter. Lily - after Colin’s mother in The Secret Garden - the woman who loved a hunchback and had him build her a locked garden of her own, and Katherine, after my grandmother - who was the youngest of five daughters whose mother died in childbirth and whose father was the town drunk. My grandmother grew up sleeping in abandoned cars, making dolls out of corn husks. Katy Miller married at sixteen and had two sons who both became preachers. My girl name was in the bag: “Lily Katherine”. Compassion. Beauty. Strength.
I put off finding a boy name until I had my ultrasound and saw the little penis there - just demanding a name. It took a while to get over the shock that I actually had a boy child inside of me. That I was growing a boy with all the boy parts and boy-ish-ness actually inside of my body. I don’t know if this is common to all women or not, but for me at least - I just always assumed that my girl body would make little girl babies. I mean I knew that women (obviously) have boy babies - it just did not feel like it was possible on a personal level to actually give birth to someone of the opposite sex. As a result, I was in denial about naming a boy.
When I started to look for a name, I discovered that the options in boy names are very limited. I did not want a popular name. I did not want a normal, everyday name. Even worse, many of the boy names that I kind of liked were being adopted and stolen by the mothers of girls. Riley, Bailey, Ryan, Zoe (Zooey) - all these were becoming known as girl names.
I turned to literature. These are the names I considered, but did not name my son: Walden, Holden, Henry (from The Secret History), Simon, and Radley with a nickname of “Boo” (you have to admit - that would have been cool - my only fear was that I felt it may doom him to being a wild partier - “Hey!!! It’s BOO!!!!!”). My pregnancy progressed. I had no name.
My husband and I were driving to Georgia from Tennessee and we were going through North Carolina. I was depressed over my lack of naming ability. I started calling out road signs “Hey, we could name him Hardees - or maybe Texaco?” - it was a joke. Then we passed a sign to a little town called “Arden”. “We could call him ‘Arden’”, I said. I paused. Wait a second. I liked the way that sounded. “Arden”. It felt right. It felt just right.
I had to look in about ten baby name books before I found it listed as a “real” name with a meaning. It meant “passionate”. I loved it. My son had a name. My son has a name. His name means “passionate”. His name is one-of-a-kind. His name is a name of rolling hills, of trees that turn colors, of green. His name is a spot between the mountains and the valleys. It bridges the distance between home and away. His name is perfect. I found the perfect name. If I give him nothing else, I have given him this.
From Margaret Atwood’s poem “Spelling”
This is a metaphor.
*
How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.
