I Was Born To Name Things

The scrod.

            Sometimes my fingers want to type up a personal essay.  Here it goes.

            I don’t know what it is, but I enjoy naming things.  I do not remember when it began, or when I first realized this, but it probably started when I began keeping a list of words.  After I started journal writing in eleventh grade or so, my notebooks were full of goofy shit.  Sentences I overheard, ideas for jokes, weak attempts at poetry.  I also kept a list of words I thought were interesting.  It was mostly the sound of the words that got my attention.  Carbuncle, hoodwinked, nub, albeit, notwithstanding, conduit, chamois, taciturn, kiln, scrum, scrod…  I also loved names and learning the derivation of names.  Why were there both Sean’s and Shawn’s?  Do you know there are both Garcia’s and Gracia’s?  Is the second one a misspelling? Where did all the names of cities and towns come from, and why were there so many repeats?  Why the hell do we call it Germany when they call it Deutschland and why is the titmouse a bird?   I put in a lot of hours daydreaming about silly shit.

            Did you know that after American slaves were freed they picked their own last names, because they often had none as slaves?  They came from surrounding towns and counties and a lot of the founding fathers, which explains they high number of Washington and Jefferson families.  Mace isn’t pepper spray; it’s a brand of pepper spray.  Portland, Oregon got its name from a coin flip.  (It could have been Boston.)  The philtrum is the name of those two lines under your nose.

            I hit my personal name giving groove when a specific cultural event occurred. It was limited to the mid to late 1980’s and was insanely huge, but then disappeared altogether: Mix tapes.  I loved music, and I loved to name things.  A genuine mix tape was two full sides of a cassette tape, each 60 or 90 minutes long, and it took you that amount of time to make the thing.  Everybody loved either making or receiving them.  To me, it was not an official mix until it had a name.  I liked to try to name it something specific about the intended recipient. I made about 300 tapes and another 100 CD’s or so when we accepted the new format.  Each one had its own name, and I kept a list.  In fact, I would sometimes give a mix tape out of the blue for someone just because I came up with a cool name for it.  Ok, that happened about 50% of the time.  Honestly.

            I didn’t just want to name tapes, I wanted to name books and movies and boats and video games and especially rock bands.  I indirectly named three bands and albums for friends of mine, and I named two musical collaborations (not really bands) for myself.  I wrote a shitload of songs and poems that I got to name.

 However, when it came to naming my own children, my mind went completely blank.  The Mrs. and I labored for months trying to come up with names for my boys. Nicholas Matthew exists because I wanted to continue two traditions, naming a kid after a saint and using the middle name of the uncle, like my name.  But we went through 8000 names to get there.  Holden came so late in the game.  It was suggested by my sister-in-law, and it stuck because The Catcher in the Rye made me want to write.  His middle name is James because we ruled everything else out.  When it came to a girl, we literally hade 12 full combinations.  Emily Rose just sort of fit for us in 1999.  Little did we know there would be an exorcism movie and a Hollywood actress with the same name.

            Sometimes I wish I was around when other people were responsible for naming things we all know.  Pineapple, horseradish, and eggplant are ridiculous in hindsight.  I feel a sick feeling every time I hear the phrase “Homeland Security”.  Although the word ‘firefly’ is cool, I think to name the show Firefly helped to keep it obscure when it ran on FOX. Why is there good cholesterol and bad cholesterol?  They should be two completely separate names to avoid confusion.  People change entire diet structures because some scientist doesn’t understand the link between language and behavior.  If light year is supposed to be a distance, than the phrase’s construction is all wrong. Also, please do not get me started with the world of IT.  An entire generation of smart math geeks who gave the English as much respect as a cat does to a sofa leg is responsible for half the tech terms we use today.    

            Street names, business names, blog names, product names.  I wish that was a business.  I wish I had a firm, and all day I thought about names.  Not some Don Draper –style perversion of the English language (Popable chips, Framily plans), but a real name with character and personality.  I’ll name your cockatiel, your organic honey business, and your newborn and I’ll have it done in two days.  Package deal. I’ll even name your favorite guitar for free.  It’s now named Evelyn.  You’re welcome.