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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, September 25, 2000
Like it or not, all of us play the name game
What's in a name, you ask? Odd you should bring it up. I've been meditating on the question myself today, ever since somebody yelled at me.
Except he didn't, really. But I thought he had. Why? Because . . . it's all in the name.
I'll try to explain. I was strolling along the sidewalk outside the Caller-Times building when I heard a guttural cry. It's difficult to re-create on paper, but it sounded like: "Hraoarcchh!"
So of course I assumed somebody was calling my name.
Does that make sense? Only when you have a monosyllabic first name that can, when called out from any distance at all, sound like . . . just about anything.
I hear a cry, an imprecation, an entreaty - even a large dog barking - and my head swivels round to see who's trying to get my attention.
In the catalogue of life's large and small annoyances, this hardly rates a mention. Still, it's something that guys named, oh, say, Montmorency or Percival or Marmaduke don't have to endure. (They, of course, have their own problems.)
Names do matter. The most spectacular example I can recall from my youth was a friend whose last name was Fuchs. You can imagine the grief his surname occasioned him. (Finally, he changed it legally to "Fox;" more power to him.)
There are people in my own family whose appellations make my given name seem downright humdrum: My Great-Uncle Shirley, for instance - after whom my aunt (to her chagrin) was named.
More? How about the three brothers way out there in the family tree: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Don't you know they were a caution?
Still, as humdrum as my name is by comparison with these, it has still posed its own challenges. There is, for instance, the business of coming to terms with the fact that you have two last names ("Brooks" being my mother's maiden name).
As a little sprout I was mortified no little at having what seemed to me an ungainly and exotic name. Why, I asked myself on more than one occasion, why couldn't Mom and Dad called me . . . oh, I dunno: Jim, or John, or Mike - a normal name?
Didn't help, either, when my little friends - as little friends are wont to do - tormented me with "Brooksie" and "babbling Brooksie." Ow. That hurt.
But, again, it could have been worse. At least Dad didn't make me a Junior. His first name was Lyle: His peers occasionally jeered him as "Lila," which was usually a prelude to fisticuffs.
He came to terms with his name, as most of us do - but among his friends he was usually "Pete." Sometimes I hoped secretly that I, too, might become a Pete - but Brooks I was, and Brooks I remain.
With the passing of years, I've pretty much come to terms with that. At some point along the line, I came to realize that there is no name, however familiar, however pleasant-sounding, that can't be turned into a taunt or a jeer.
And that goes for surnames: The family name of one of the best friends of my youth was Berezovytch - a Ukrainian name, not exactly a commonplace in little ol' Austin, Texas. I can still hear a gym teacher (deliberately) mangling his name: "Berezonagustechek."
Then there was one of the guys with whom I went through Army ROTC basic: _Shpakowski. One drill sergeant took gleefully massacred that, turning it into "Shipakawowski."
Names can be powerful stuff, no question: How far do you think Adolf Hitler would have gotten had he been saddled with the name of his paternal grandmother - Schicklgruber? Think it's surprising that an obscure Georgian radical, Joseph Dzhugashvili, cobbled up a new surname: Stalin (Russian for "man of steel")?
For the vast majority of us, however, it's not a matter of cosmic moment. Unless a name proves to be a real affliction, we come to terms with it, even derive a little familial pride from it.
So, in all likelihood, I'll continue to do the occasional double-take when I hear one of those monosyllabic cries. A small enough price, I'd say, for not being A Boy Named Sue.
Brooks Peterson
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