On Naming a Human

The most recent mind-blowing revelation I had in regards to having a son is how Andrea and myself are naming someone whose identity is going to be tied into his name. I've spent loads of time thinking of all of the great names I could name my eventual children (I still can't believe Andrea won't give me Cheswick. The guy who played him in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was in a scene from Alligator with her future name on the wall!).

If this isn't a sign, I don't know what is.

In these flights of fancy, I never really thought of the would-be child as an entity because, well, I hadn't gotten anyone pregnant. Now that little Oliver Henson Capp is almost here, I can't help but feel an unexpected pressure about the name.

It's almost surreal. When you name a pet, you can be as ridiculous or as ordinary as you like. They don't care. A pet will respond to anything if you call it that enough (a brief list of some of the pet names I've come up with: three yellow labs and a chocolate lab named after the Ghostbusters, an English bulldog named "Beef Wellington" with the nickname "Beefy," a mutt named PJ Bottoms, and any type of dog with jowls called "Jowly Roger"). While there's license to be creative with a child's name, there's a risk of mockery that isn't there in the animal kingdom. I've never been too concerned about mockery because any name can be cannibalized into something hurtful (or worse yet, personality traits), but one doesn't want one's child to resent the name he or she has been given.

Definitely the biggest mind-trip about naming the baby is that there's going to be an identity tied to the name. Oliver is going to grow up and become an individual. His name is going to conjure an image in people's minds, just as all of our names do. When people think of me, I'd imagine they think "tall, glasses, red hair." Probably some other things, but I won't go out on a limb for the less objective of facts about myself. People are going to be doing that with Oliver and I can't wrap my head around it (and I may not even be expressing it well, either). As much as I'd like to think one can do that with pets, one can really come up with a description that applies to any number of other pets.

What's really interesting to me is that the name Andrea and I have chosen is an expression of our tastes. We wouldn't pick a name we don't like. But it's also a nerdy kind of name and that may be less subconscious than I'd like to think. I can't wait to share Monty Python, King Kong, The Muppets, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and all sorts of other "nerdy" culture with Oliver (don't think I'm not tickled that he'll share a name with Oliver Hardy) and I hope that he connects with that stuff. Yeah, I can relate to nerds. On the other hand, I may end up with someone like Tom Hanks' son, and that's OK, too.

I seem to have lost the thread. But yeah, naming a child is weird.