muckefuck | Family intervention

Family intervention

I'm in total agreement with my brother-in-law when it comes to naming children and he insists "You have to have a theme" and his choice of one--begining with vowel letters in alphabetical order--isn't bad. But something must be done to prevent my sister from going with her choice of a name that is:

Different from his older brother's name by only one segment (i.e. /ð/)
Horribly trendy (ranked 68 in the USA last year compared to 156th most popular when we were born)

At yesterday's barbecue, I pressed my case that since gentle persuasion has failed--Isidore ("Patron saint of the Internet!"), Ignatius Loyola ("He'd get into the Jesuit college of his choice--FOR FREE!"), Immanuel, and Ichabod have all ended up on the trash heap--the time has come for concerted unilateral action: We need to form a consensus on a nickname now and begin employing it exactly as if his parents' choice were a figment of someone's imagination.

My model for a successful nicknaming is my mother's baby brother. When I was an adolescent, I couldn't figure out why all my cousins called him "Butch" when Mom had told me he was named "Vincent". The family story is that he was a very pretty baby. When his older sisters took him out for a ride in the buggy, passers-by were forever asking, "She's so beautiful, what's her name?" Someone (no one can agree who) started replying "Butch" and it stuck--boy, did it stick.

We tossed around dozens of possibilities without coming to any agreement. Here's an incomplete list:

Slim
Sly
Slimer
Tad(pole)
Dale [requires renaming older brother "Chip"]
Ion
iBaby
Ivan [from his stepmother by phone]
Killer

Hmm--they seemed better in a post-prandial caipirinha haze. Do any of them look like they might have legs? Further suggestions?

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iBaby seems like a nonstarter, at least if you're looking in the long-term, combining as it does the necessarily ephemeral "baby" with a prefix that will probably be about as current as "Disco [x]" before the child turns ten. On the other hand, it does have an appropriate accompanying gift. Chip and Dale strike me as the most likely to be infectious, at least among the adult generation. (Have modern children ever heard of them, except maybe at a Walt Disney World character breakfast?)

Now that you mention it, I think "Disco" really needs to be a contender.

Ooo, I like "Disco." My second choice is "Slim." One needs a nickname that lends itself well to directing the passing of the cheese-&-crackers plate.

(Mine was "Legs.")

I used to work with a Vietnamese fellow whose family used a fairly rigid, but consistent naming scheme: all males born in his generation had first names beginning with the letter L. All males in his parent's generation had names beginning with K. All males in the subsequent generation (when that occurred) would have names beginning with M, and so on. I imagine that his great-great-great-grandchildren will have problems...

Depends if the names are Vietnamese or Anglo-American. A lot of Vietnamese syllables begin with <q> (including the very common "middle name" Quang), so this wouldn't be a problem. But I assume you mean Anglo-American names, since Vietnamese and other East Asian names generally follow rather different formal rules.

Some Chinese lineages have family poems which are used to generate given names. Members of each generation have a character of the poem as a "generation name" or first element of their given name; the next generation will use the next character in the poem, and so forth. This has its basis in Confucian notions of generational hierarchy, which demand a certain protocol between members of different generations regardless of their relative ages and, therefore, place a premium on being able to identify and recall someone's rank easily. As those notions die away, many families have abandoned this system, but it's still widespread to use a common first element among siblings. (There are also more complex ways of linking generations or siblings. For instance, I knew one family where each of the three boys had a one-character name (all the rage in modern China) which consisted of a single radical repeated thrice. The son I knew was called Pin (品), but I can't remember the names of his brothers.)

If your co-worker was Sino-Vietnamese (and a lot of Vietnamese immigrants to the USA are actually of ethnic Chinese origin), his family might have used such a system for the Chinese-derived names. I don't know Vietnamese naming customs as well. I know that men typically have two-part given names and that the first elements of these are generally taking from a very small pool (still at least an order of magnitude bigger than that for women, who until recently universally took Thị), but it seems that these are sometimes generational elements, sometimes birth-order elements, and sometimes have other functions.

I know a couple who named their son Joachim so they could call him Jake. His second name was Benno. The wife was an francophone British Sephardic Jew and her husband... was from the Bronx.

I can't remember the last time I met a native-born American with the name "Joachim". It seems to be a given name much more popular elsewhere (e.g. Joaquin, Achim, Gioacchino, etc.) than in the USA. If I met someone named "Joachim Benno", I'd be shocked to discover they weren't German.

Most Ashkenazi Jews I know still do the religoius name/civic name thing, but I get the impression that tradition isn't as strong among Sephardim.

There are a couple of young (native-born) Joachims in my extended social circle. The first time I heard the nickname "Joa" (pronounced Yoah, of course) I was certain I'd misheard.

Threaten to sell the naming rights to goldenpalace.com, that ought to bring her round to something reasonable right quick...

I'm still rooting for babies to be named after modern virtues related to traditional sins, like "Self-Esteem" (pride) or "Ambition" (greed) or "Relaxation" (sloth).

"Ambition" would had to have been the first child. How about "Insensitivity"?

I can start a campaign for Ion or from it's Greek derived Ienai.

I like "Ion", but now I worry that it's too close to the original. It seems that if this is going to succeed, it needs to sound like something that couldn't be a deformation, the better to destroy all memory of the Name That Dare Not Be Spoken.

How about "Ike"? That's a great nickname, and people will forever be asking if it's short for something, and you can look puzzled and say "You know, I don't really remember."

"Ike", "Izzy", and "Iggy" are all fantastic nicknames that any child should proud to sport. Too bad Mom doesn't see it that way!

I would be happy to call any baby Ivan, and it can stick into adulthood. Plus since it actually matches the scheme, people might be fooled into thinking it's his real name.

I think I'll start telling all the relatives the name is "Ivan" in any case. It's close enough that they could easily get mixed up and honestly have no idea they've got the name wrong. Then "Crazy Ivan" and "Ivan the Terrible" become ready-made adolescent monikers.

Have they even met the little fellow yet? Surely there's an argument for waiting to name the child until they get a good look at him. When I was expecting the Fabulous Babe, I was experimenting with "Sylvie" or "Amanda" for a girl. However, when she made her illustrious debut, she was clearly neither of those names, but her own sweet Self.

Same here -- we were convinced our firstborn would be either James or Harrison, yet when he emerged he was clearly a "Morgan".

I think you need to suggest Ivor as a given name.

I did. Every plausible alternative was explored and, apparently, found wanting.

Ein - wie ich finde interessanter - Beitrag zur Namensgebung und zu Kosenamen auf Bali:

http://www.tetti.de/BALI/NAMEN/index.html

Ist das jetzt schon das dritte Kind deiner Schwester oder habe ich das mittlere Kind erfunden?

oh, ich war gar nicht eingeloggt. Aber du hast mich vermutlich trotzdem erkannt, oder?

Natürlich!

Also nehme ich an, dass du "Komang" oder "Nyoman" als Vorschlag unterbreitest?

Nicht wirklich ernsthaft ...
Ich dachte nur, du könntest es interessant finden.
Wobei Nyoman hat schon einen schönen Klang.

Freilich--wenn richtig ausgesprochen. Aber du weisst ja, wie schrecklich amerikanische Biederleute den Namen verstümmeln würden: "Najomän", "Nümann", und noch schlimmeres.

A friend of my Dad's with the family surename of sharp, insisted on naming his kids Lance and Saber. And yes, he was ex military, with an apparently military grade of humor. Both of his sons were wicked terrors....

princeofcairo's father, Mr Hite (RIP), had to be physically restrained from naming his children "Faron" and "Gezoont". Or at least that's the story.

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