What's In a Name?: Only Pumpkin Knows
I am over my parent's home, having just finished helping them prepare for a holiday party for my mother's women's "circle", a church charitable group. I told them that I had seen mutual friends the day before - a grandmother, daughter and her two year old son, James, known as JT. When I entered the grandmother's store where JT was playing he was babbling delightedly about Mickey Mouse, almost his only set of words. I finally asked him his name. I got back Mickey, though not in a manner that made me think that he thought that this was his moniker. The boy just loves the Mouse.
I then said, "Hey James!" James turned quickly and looked under a nearby table. We all laughed but his mother and grandmother had an explanation for something that was, to me, inexplicable. "He's looking for his cousin James!" Are you telling me that this child doesn't know that his name is James?," I said. They laughed. Apparently he occasionally recognizes JT, but will have to learn that he and his cousin and his father all share the same name. And that his cousin is unlikely to be found under small tables in gift shops.
My parents and I then began talking about children's names - how parents name their children, how names get bastardized, just funny stories about names. Here are two of the absolutely true stories that my parents told me and that I can now share, having picked my face up off of the floor.
My father attended elementary school with twins who were known to the neighborhood kids as Ju and Bill. When, on the first day of school, their teacher asked one of the twins his name, he replied, "Ju". "No," said the teacher. "Your name is Julius. And what is your name?, " she inquired of his twin. Frightened, he replied, "Bilious."
My mother was a teacher in a school in Seattle. She had taken the roll and found a disturbing problem. She had a lovely little girl who said her name was "Punkin" and a missing child who name was Elizabeth. My mother asked Punkin, "What is your real name?" "Punkin!," was her emphatic and repeated response. On the third day of school, and because Elizabeth was also still absent, my mother walked home with Punkin. When Mother knocked on the door, a woman opened and she inquired if the child that she had in tow was her child. "Yes," she said. "What is her name?" asked my mother. "Punkin," stated the woman. "No, her real name." "Punkin." "What's her birth name, the name on her birth certificate?" asked my mother. The woman looked at my mother as if had two heads. She was confused by this question and stood quietly in the door for a long time. "I think it's Elizabeth," she finally said. "You think?" exploded my mother. "Well," said Punkin's mother, we've always called her Punkin so I just forgot. Punkin's always been her name to me." Punkin looked up at my mother and said, "Told ya so!"
I recalled that, in my first placement when I was a psychology grad student, I was assigned the case of a beautiful little girl whose mother, a radical feminist, had thought it a favor to name her daughter Vagina. I took her to court for parental abuse. The female judge, also a feminist, though less radical, thought it wise to let the 6 year old girl choose her own name. She chose to name herself Tree (not her real name but very close).
And when my parents lived in Providence, Rhode Island in the early 1950's, a woman who had had many babies by natural childbirth finally gave birth in a hospital. The procedure was done with chloroform. So grateful was she for a painfree birth that her child's name, Chloroform, will forever shout that claim.
Names are indeed fascinating things.