Writing365 #2 – what’s in a name?

Parents have no choice but to provide for their child a name… or at least someone has to.

My name was chosen at random from a selection of names both my parents liked. I believe I know what it means but don’t attach much relevance to the supposed ‘meaning’ of names really. It’s a bit like suggesting the day of the week you were born on decides your character.

To me, my parents’ choice of my name simply means they loved and respected each other and that they loved me too. My chosen pen name (if ever my writing’s published) incorporates all three of our names into one. All my children have middle names that reference one or more grand-parent.

My youngest daughter’s name apparently means ‘love’ and it is one of the reasons it was chosen. It was also the only one that both her father and myself agreed on liking. While pregnant I’d chosen girls names already but neither of them suited her when she arrived in the world.

My eldest was almost given six forenames but that was scaled down as unreasonable. That was after much deliberation, arguments and being known as both BJ (for my surname, Junior) and PJ (for his father’s surname, Junior) for at least a month while the issue was settled.

When I was a child we once had pet baby rabbits, deciding to keep only one at which point we had to choose a name. As he/she was white the obvious choice was ‘Snowy’.

Decades later I brought in a lost stray kitten one winter, almost frozen on my doorstep. No-one claimed or admitted ownership of her in spite of our knowing which neighbouring household she had come from. We decided to keep her and my son’s first choice of name for her was ‘Snowy’ because it had been cold and everywhere was white with thick crunchy frost. However she was a fully black cat so that suggestion was rebuffed, as was ‘Frosty’. He’d been learning in school about Egypt and their gods and goddesses and his next suggestion was ‘Isis’. That satisfied his need to reference the winter ‘icy-ness’ in her name and so it was agreed.

I don’t have responsibility for cats anymore but brought home a poorly five week old puppy unable to feed from her mother and in need of special care and nursing. My daughter had always wanted a dog and we decided to keep her. Her given name from her birth home was ‘Boo’ so we decided to keep that name as it suited her.

My ‘petname’ for our dog is ‘Babooshka’ meaning Russian grandmother (among other absurd modern misuses) and I call her that when she’s obstinate or the rare occasion she’s ‘naughty’ (better than swearing at her but could be taken similarly!) My daughter likes the similarity with ‘boosh’ from the TV series ‘The Mighty Boosh’ and that’s also how it sounds whenever I say ‘Boo, shh!’

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