name

hello

Names are funny things.

My names been “Peter” most of my life.  There may have been a short period of namelessness between my birth and when they first officially recorded it, but if there was, I don’t remember it.

It’s my name.  It’s what I’m called.

But I could look in the mirror right this minute and wonder, “Well, there I am…and my name is Peter.  Where’d that come from?”

It’s, like I said, a funny thing to have a name.  It’s funny to have a name that someone else picked out.

You’ve got to have a name, though.  It would be too confusing, otherwise.

We’d have to operate off of a “description only” basis if we all didn’t have names…it would be like, “no….the dark-haired one…no…I won’t say fat, but it’s kind of bigger than that other dark haired one.  Just bigger…I don’t know…around the middle, I guess…the middle part…right….the belly part…right, that one…the one with the shoes…right.”

It makes it easier to have a name.  It was a smart decision to give us an identifier like a name.

It saved us a lot of time.

Now, some names work against us.  It’s not our fault…it’s something about connotations and sometimes even just the way a name sounds.

If you name your child “Adolph” it really doesn’t fly.  It’s kind of like an “anti-Cher” kind of name…you can identify with just the first name…but it’s a bad identification.  It’s bad especially if you have a premature little mustache.  It doesn’t work to be named Adolph anymore.  It’s not at the top of the list for baby names in any of the books I read.

Charles is a good name. Charles, Chuck…it’s good. Unless, of course, you choose “Manson” for a middle name.  You really have to think about the current events of the last 100 years or so…and maybe that’s way past the statute of limitations for “current events”, I really don’t know…but you have to be careful about what connections people are going to make.

“Charles Manson…” isn’t a good name for a child.

“Schleroderma” would be a bad name.  I don’t know what it means…but it doesn’t sound good.  It’s unpleasant.  You should name your child something pleasant.

“Satan” is a really bad name for any baby.

Those are some bad baby names.  They would be a curse for a baby to be saddled with a name like that.

But any name you give a new baby requires a period of adjustment.

You have to work your way into being able to say your new child’s name.

Saying your new child’s name is just one small part of getting used to having another human being in your life. It’s a really small and important part of getting used to the whole situation.

It might take a couple of days before the name really starts rolling off your tongue.

Our new baby’s name is Sparrow.

You don’t hear that one very often.

It’s not hard to say, really.  I know that’s her name.  But it’s new.

I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone else “Sparrow”.

So it doesn’t roll off my tongue yet.

Our 4-year-old calls her “little guy”.

That’s easy enough to say, but not really accurate.

She really is more of a “little gal” than a “little guy”.

I guess it’s really like that old “frog on the log in the middle of the pond on a bump on the log with a knot on the bump…there’s a hole, there’s a hole, there’s a hole in the middle of the ground” song.

You remember that one?

We have a name…to make it easier to identify the shell that we walk around in…that carries our spirit  while we’re on this big ball floating through space.

We aren’t our name…but it sure helps to describe who we are.  It makes us easier to pick out of a crowd.

Sparrow, Sparrow, Sparrow….it’s starting to roll off my tongue as I speak.

 

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

Comments

name — 1 Comment

  1. When you sent us the “Bella Photographs,” I yelled to Grampy, “They’ve named her Bella!”
    But by the time he arrived in the office, I said, “Wait up, they’ve really named her “Sparrow!”
    Silence. Then, he said “His eye is on the Sparrow.”
    Her name might be new, but I feel a trend coming!
    Trend-setter Sparrow has landed, and our family feels more complete.