13 September 2008

A Rose by Another Name...

Would still smell like a rose. And some roses don't have an odor. I know. I have about 20 DIFFERENT varieties of roses here at my house. Don't worry, I have no idea what they are, they were all here when we moved here, and my job is to not kill them. My children are the ones who discovered that while they ALL have thorns, not all of them "stink".

But really, I didn't want to talk about roses. What I really wanted to ponder on is names.

Before we went to the hospital to have our second baby, Mr. Snicklebutt and I had already picked out two names. One for a boy (just in case), and one for a girl... (also, just in case). This last time, we had a name for a girl... (just in case), and we were in deliberation on a name for a boy. I didn't like the name he REALLY wanted, and he didn't like the name I REALLY wanted, so we had decided to not worry about a boy name until we found out the gender of our baby.

It would have saved a lot of time if we had just come up with a name before we got to the hospital. But then... none of the names that we had considered seemed to fit. It took us three days to come up for a name for our little D.F.

So why the struggle with a name for a boy? I have come to the conclusion that a name is something that you give to a child that they can never get rid of. (They can try, but their name will always be there...) A girl child has the option of changing her name a little - when she gets married, she can either keep or drop her maiden name; as a middle name or even as a hyphenated name (not my choice of an option, but hey - it happens). A boy child on the other hand - that's his name for life! This knowledge became so much an integral part of our decision to name our little guy that it was almost a battle to decide what we wanted him to be known as. The name decision came down to a name that really sounded strange to me. I didn't want to have any sort of a way for people to make fun of our child's name, but then again, I didn't want to give him a name that other people would wonder what we were thinking about. So... after much deliberation and some arguing and some debating, we decided to leave the name alone. I would pray about it overnight - there were some surface issues with the name that I was concerned about - and then make the decision in the morning.

End result? Our son is named after a concrete company. He has a good solid name. It's one that has taken me some time to get used to, but it seems to fit him - strangely... His first name is LeGrand. He is definitely "The Large". Everything that he has done has seemed to be LARGE.

I wonder often though - what causes a person to name their child after fruit? Or after a day of the week? Or after a CAR??? What really is in a name? Is it just a series of letters strung together to make a word, or is it something that is to be treasured as it used to be?

I was named after the wife of a friend of my parents after the friend was killed in a plane crash. The wife is still alive and living in Florida, I think... I have two sisters who are named for virtues. I have a brother who shares my Dad's first name as his middle name. I have neices who are named after grandparents. I have a daughter who is named after a favorite great-aunt - and then we found out that we have MULTIPLE Great-Aunts who all share the same name... So what is it with names?

I know the history behind my name... Do you know yours? Does your name have a special meaning? Is it spelled the way it is because of language nuances? Why is your name important? What makes you... well, YOU!?

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