What's Your Name?

At birth most Americans are issued by their parent(s) a First, Middle and Surname. Christian or non-religious folks almost always include a middle name and often choose to confuse their families and others by making a boy a “junior” or bestowing the same honor (at least as to first name) on a little girl. “Where’s John?”, someone bellows at the family reunion. “Junior or Senior?,” someone bellows back. My maternal grandmother – despite her many insecurities - told her daughter that I looked nothing like my legal first name (I was a junior – do you see the danger now?) and announced that my name was David, my middle name. No one was in any mood to piss off a stylish 57 year old woman who could simultaneously cook a perfect pot roast, darn a sock, redecorate the dining room, alter a dress and start a seasonal cutting garden all under the influence of enough Maker’s Mark to kill the average 200 pound man. So, David it was. I wish I had my grandmother around a little longer than I did because she is responsible for the top of my resume looking extremely pompous. I always use a first initial, then David, then my surname.

Of course, for every rule, there are exceptions. Some Jewish friends have no middle name at all. (How do you give a person with only two names personalized Land’s End shirts?) When having children of their own, they endeavor to choose a first name that honors a dead relative, sometimes cheating a bit by telling me that all you really have to do is use the first initial of the dead relative but I bet that wasn’t always considered so kosher. To me, this explains the virtual disappearance of Berthas and Mortimers from the telephone book.

Most of my African-American friends bathe in the freedom of choosing or inventing any name that they want. Most of the girls’ names sound very pretty. They could choose a traditional African first or middle name or go more local and choose Emily. These choices are immune from criticism for a very important reason. Most African Americans never got to choose or retain their surname which often matched their slave master’s. If they want to be a little more creative than the rest of us, they earned it the hard way through their ancestors. I know plenty of African Americans of my generation whose parents went with the flow and called their kids Ann or William. Maybe they liked the names or they might have thought that the civil rights struggle was going to be over soon and thought that buying into the established white cultural norms, even with names, would make it easier for their kids. It’s not over yet.
As for middle names, if yours doesn’t match your maternal or paternal grandmother’s surname or your mother’s maiden surname, you are far less likely to be invited to Old Guard WASPy events near a body of water. The best you’re likely to do is get into a Where’s Waldo picture at a Hamptons party with other upper middle class social climbers like the Housewives of New York on Bravo TV. You may not care about that but I thought I’d mention it so you could get through the overwhelming sense of disappointment this might cause you. If you are weeping at this point, you are missing the point unless your tears are from laughing too hard.

Americans of all socioeconomic strata cannot seem to leave any polysyllabic name alone. It must be shortened or changed. David turns into Dave, Peter into Pete, Patricia into Pat, Edward into Ed, Eddie, Ned, etc. I don’t know whether it’s because it denotes a casual American style, a level of intimacy or familiarity or whether they never liked the name in the first place. For me, I am almost always called David in professional settings. With family and most friends, I am Dave or even Davey. I like all of them so I don’t care. My maternal grandfather always called me Skipper. While it’s true that we fished from a boat together over the years, I was hardly an expert at navigation and my rowing technique left much to be desired. The big exception here is that your European friends (except some Brits who probably started all of this in the first place), will refuse to shorten your name, because, as one friend explained in college, “it’s your name”. When it comes along with an accent, I love the sound of my full name.

This gets tricky because, at least in the US, it again depends to some extent on social class. Those lines have blurred somewhat and have become more about bank accounts than bloodlines in some places. Let’s start at the top with the Muffies (I have known a Muffy and she was very nice and very down to Earth despite her dynastic wealth and lack of any apparent ambition to do anything but buy Lily Pulitzer shifts while in Palm Beach. I don’t think I ever learned her given name. The other example is George W. Bush, whose penchant for nicknaming everyone he ever met deserves a diagnosis in the DSM IV. Medical research will never find a cure for it.

Next stop: the upper middle class. This could involve no nicknaming at all, lest someone think that they are not serious people with serious jobs, serious money and very, very serious children. These are the most tortured people among us; my heart goes out to them. I usually find such people humorless and boring. They desperately want their children to meet and marry Muffies but Muffies are hardwired to know when someone is a social climber and will befriend lots of people anyway but know that their marriage options are somewhat preordained and do not typically include having a father-in-law who owns a chain of carwashes. These tortured souls, if they try to mimic Muffy’s family by nicknaming their kids in a similar way, will be disappointed to learn that Muffy’s kin will still know what you are up to and, without saying a word, will think that the nicknames sound more like ones that Sarah Palin would use as a first name on a birth certificate. They won’t speak about it unless Muffy comes home during college and professes love for one of these guys.

For the poorest white folks, it’s all over the map. They probably don’t spend much time thinking about the social significance of their naming choices. Chalk that up to holding down three part-time jobs that don’t include paid maternity leave. They tend to keep it simple but will sometimes choose names like Farrah or some other name that will sound extremely stupid when the child turns 80.

This is hardly an exhaustive discussion of these phenomena. We’re leaving out NASCAR aficionados who apparently like hyphenated Billy-Bobs, etc. or parents who just say “hey, you – YEAH, YOU – get upstairs and make your bed.” The child’s nickname is You. It seems a little difficult to develop a persona around that.

I wonder how my sister (mostly European descent) and her husband, Indian (the country, not the locals) will decide to name their kids. They could pull off a really interesting mix. I have nothing against Tiffanys but you won’t find them choosing that one. My parents chose my sister’s name – Leah – because they liked it. Some of my Jewish friends jokingly point out that my Protestant/Catholic parents ended up with two kids with Hebrew names and that it explains how I ended up being a lawyer and my sister ended up being a pediatrician, although when queried on this my parents never considered that when playing the name game. As the true hypocrite I am, I often refer to my sister as Lee, my mother’s middle name that came from some distant tendril of surname ancestry.

Why does any of this matter? Maybe it doesn’t matter to you at all. The reason it fascinates me is because people actually do make assumptions about people based on their names. All of the Farrahs born in the late 70s and early 80s will, for many, conjure up an image of a gorgeous blonde but won’t take them very seriously until one of them perfects cold table-top fusion at MIT, even if they have master’s degrees and Mensa-qualifying IQs. It’s wrong to do that but I think it’s true.

The good news is that we elected President Barack Hussein Obama, but only after some nasty people wasted their television punditry moment or spent money on advertisements trying to scare people about the President’s middle name. As shameful as that was, a majority of us didn’t care. That’s progress, especially if it sends a chill up the back of Ann Coulter.

I’ve missed or left out lots of other observations and exceptions to them. Please add freely.