Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Name Game: Part 2

One of my favorite uncles is named Mickey. Mickey never had any children and treated me like I was his child. Mickey is my Dad's oldest brother, and after my father passed away Mickey and I would spend a lot of time together. He became a huge part of my life and I would spend every weekend with him. On Saturdays he would take me to see the ponies. My mother, ever so naive, truly believed that he was taking me to ride horses. In reality he was grooming me to become a gambler. He would take me to the racetrack and say "Trace, pick one for the trifecta." I loved it. I only picked horses that had girlie sounding names. After the racetrack he would buy scratch tickets and let me keep the money from the tickets that I scratched. When I became a teenager and thought that going to the racetrack with my Uncle Mickey was played out, I would stay in his house while he went to the track. During one of his track outings I uncovered what I thought was a mind blowing secret. I was going through Mickey's mail and realized that everything was addressed to Lawrence S-----, my brother. I immediately needed to know why my brother's mail was going to Mickey's house! I waited for Mickey to come home and asked him why he had my brother's mail. He told me that his name was also Lawrence S-----. I was all "uhmm, duh, your name is, like, Mickey (with tons of eye rolling)." He nearly fell out of his chair laughing. When he finally stopped laughing he told me the story of being one of the few Irish kids in a predominantly Italian neighborhood. All of the Italian kids in the neighborhood made fun of the Irish kids and called them Mic or Mickey.

I take away from this an important lesson. No matter how hard we try to pick a nickname-proof name for our child, kids can find a way to come up with a nickname for anyone. We should just not worry about it and pick a name that we like.

3 comments:

GeekByMarriage said...

Heather Feather was always a huge hit. My maiden name Switzer (Switzerland) always went far with the kids at school.

I tried to name proof my kids.
Rebecca- BEC BEC BECCA (like a chicken)
Kyle (Safe so far)
Seth (Safe so far)

Unfortunately, their last name is Hart (Fart). *sigh*

GiantJamSandwich said...

Hi guys, you must be getting so excited! Our future munchkin is still nameless, so if you have any suggestions... We considered naming him Lehman Merrill Bear just to commemorate this fun year.

Anonymous said...

You are righ, Tracy. Kids will always come up with nicknames for others, no matter how hard you try to pick a "safe name". For a while I had one nickname - Skippy (Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was a popular Australian television series for children). It had nothing to do with my name and I hated it(I was always active,being here and there). And of course when I was teaching in high school, I got one, too - enchilada (I love Mexican cuisine, which is not so known here in Europe). So who can beat that?
Emma