I DIDN’T THINK names could surprise me anymore.
I’ve gotten used to Brooklyn and Montana as girls instead of signposts. I barely raise an eyebrow at the ex-football player Marion Butts or the skier Picabo Street. Even the queen of them all, Moon Unit Zappa, has lost some of its power to shock.
I thought I’d seen it all. But I should have gotten real. Or should I say “4real”?
No, I’m not kidding. There is a couple in New Zealand that is currently fighting for the right to name their son 4real Wheaton, reflecting the surprise the parents felt when they saw the ultrasound. So far, the New Zealand Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages is trying to talk them out of it, citing rules that prevent names “likely to cause offense to a reasonable person,” such as the moniker Adolf Hitler Jones. If no compromise is reached by July 9, the baby will be registered as the oh-so-much-more-sensible “real Wheaton.”
As opposed to all those fake Wheatons out there, presumably.
I’m not sure which disturbs me more — that there are parents willing to give their son a name straight out of an Internet chat room, or that a government office exists to prevent them from doing it. Either one suggests a level of absurdity that Lewis Carroll and Dave Barry could only dream of.
And yet, both sides have a point. And it’s the same point: names are special.
I know, big revelation, huh? Going back to the oldest days of humanity, names were believed to hold great power. Even in a modern age with no fear of sorcery, names still have the ability to get parents wrangling and children cringing. One study even supposedly found that children with “good” initials like G.O.D or T.O.P. felt better about themselves than children with “bad” initials like D.U.M.
That may be going a bit far. But still, to re-phrase the old hymn, there’s just something about a name.
That never really hit home with me until after I married Heather.
We’d been married a few months when I noticed an odd habit of hers. She would call me by any number of pet names: “Spikey” was a favorite after seeing my uncombed hair for the first time, or “Mr. Bear” when I offered to be the personal teddy bear she’d never had. But she hardly ever called me “Scott.”
One day, I asked her about it, just out of curiosity. She blushed a little. I’m not sure she’d ever really thought about it herself.
“I guess names are kind of special to me,” she finally said after a little reflection. “It’s like they’re too important to use every day.”
I started to digest that. And that’s about when I realized that I’d been calling her “Kiddo,” “Soapy,” “Mrs. Bear” — almost anything, in fact, except “Heather.”
Somewhere along the line, her name had become a treasure. Too beautiful to say, too wonderful to use casually.
It had become one more sign of love.
The fads will come and go. Tomorrow we may see a child named Verizon, or Soprano, or Death-To-Paris. We may see more like Autumn Brown, the British baby with 25 middle names, all from famous boxers.
But never mind. The power of names will endure: a treasure mixed in history and quirkiness and beauty, one of the most special gifts that one person can give another.
And that’s 4real.
Scott Rochat’s e-mail address is rochat@emporiagazette.com.