Uniquely You

Today

I really should stop wasting time on silly Facebook Quizzes. The latest took my name and DOB and ranked my parents' originality on the basis of how popular my name was in 1947. 116th, that's what and my parents only got a B+ for originality. What's more, the quiz told me that the equivalent name today (ranking 116th, that is) is "Rylee". What kind of a name is that?

It seems to me that people these days are not given "real" names, just collections of letters that sound nice. But then, I may be old-fashioned to think that names should have some meaning or carry ancestral weight.

In a recent article I read an idea that name-giving can be ranked as though they were sandwiches, from the dull (cheese & pickle - "John" or "Ann") to the adventurous (honey & anchovy paste on pumpernickel - "Mylene" or "Tatum"). At least the first is palatable and digestible.

In My Day

The names that Mamma and Daddy gave us were a mixture of the safe and ancestral. I may have mentioned elsewhere the family legend that David, due on Feb 14th, was to be called "Valentine" until he delayed his birth by a day. I don't know what Daddy thought of this, but Mamma used to say that he vetoed "Oliver" for Chris as being way too outlandish (today Oliver would rank only a bit above the cheese and pickle). Second names for both were familial - "Lawrence" for David, carrying on Daddy's 2nd name and "Paul" for Mamma's father.

I copped the ancestral principle big-time, "Alice" for Mamma and "Julia" for my grandmother Hedwig Eva Julia). Mamma had named Beatrice before she was born, being certain that she was carrying a girl. (She had a slight proviso that if she was wrong "Benedict" would be the name but fortunately she and Daddy didn't have to argue that one out.)

The only one of us whose name was shortened was Chris - "Xopher" or "Xpher", although Beatrice later tried out a variety of shortened forms, settling on Beaty or Bea which I guess is better than "Trixie".

At school names were a sort of burden of varying weights from the outlandish (we had a Norwegian girl at school named Solveig who patiently explained again and again that the "G" was silent) to the dull - Susan - and the fashionable -Sandras and Brendas abounded back in 1950's England.

In Germany recently I talked to my cousins about our names - the eldest, also Julia for the same reason as me and Wiebke who was given this Danish name after an old friend of her mother's who is still alive and living in Minnesota. "Did you know," said Wiebke "that Grandmother was known as "Julia"?" She showed me several documents with "Julia" followed by "Hedwig" in brackets. No, I didn't, and was somehow comforted to know that she, too, carried this burden of using day-to-day a name other than her first given name.

We touch hands across the generations, Grandmother.