The Name Game

As the pregnancy picture posts continue on some of my loopy friends' blogs, another thread brought up names. Poor Liz shared the trauma of being called "Lizard of Oz" and the subsequent satisfaction of taking matters into her own hands. (You go, Liz!)

Everyone has a name story, don't they? Even Robert. It's a simple name, common. You think it'd be easy. But you can't imagine how many people are introduced to him and then immediately call him "Bob." Robert is not a Bob. He never has been, never will be, and anyone who knows him knows that. His family's never called him Bob, not Bobby, not even Robby. It's Robert. The closest it gets is when his sister or I will call just the first syllable of his name, "Rob-" But even then, his name's not Rob.

Christine. That's what my parents named me, and in a desperate need for any change at all, I changed the spelling in high school. It's on my social security card as Kristine, so it will stay that way. But I digress.

Christine. I don't think my parents ever called me Christine. Chris, Chrissy, Tippy, Tipper. Crispy Critter. Chris. It was a perfectly fine name. But when I started kindergarten, I found, to my horror, that it was a boy's name. It wasn't just a boy's name, it was a weird boy's name. Poor little Chris Rodriguez, he was odd through no fault of his own. I think his father had died. He had a terribly over-protective mother who walked him to school every day. This was back in the 60s, and no one's mom walked them to school. (Instead we hid behind trees, terrified, when strange cars drove past.) His mom wore a thick, long, black, wool winter coat and scarvey things around her neck. It was sunny California, remember, in the 1960s. My mom wore sleeveless mini dresses, pretty much the norm for moms back then.

(Don't worry, Mom, I won't tell about the mini dress with the naked ladies outlined all over it. At least not this time. And I don't think that was the norm.)
Even at the age of 5, I did not want to share my name with a boy. So I didn't. After that, for at least eight years, I made every teacher call me "Christine." My friends continued to call me Chris, eventually Kris. Now it's Kristine. New friends often will call me Kristin or Kristina. I don't care, but if they call me Kris, I remind them it's Kristine.

The possibility of having a boy name even affected how I named my kids. I loved the girls' names Jordan, Taylor, Kendall. At some point it dawned on me that I would have hated any of those, because they could be boy names. I bet you don't know many boys named Holly.

We had our son's name picked for many months before he was born--Cameron John. Cameron. Cam. A boy's name. But that was the year Cameron Diaz became famous. Camryn Manheim was on The Practice. Two days before my Cameron was born, I realized -- he was going to have a girl's name.

The only thing worse than being a girl with a boy's name would be a boy with a girl's name.

Robert came up with Trevor. It sounded like a boy name to me. Trevor. Not hoity-toity British Trevor. Trucks, tractors, dirt, big-guy in dirty jeans, deep voice, unshaven, masculine. Trevor. I've never heard of a girl named Trevor. Lucky for Trev, he wasn't born any earlier. (It's almost funny how often he gets called Travis, but at least that's a boy name too.)

I wonder what happened to Chris Rodriguez. Poor kid. He had enough to deal with in life. He was probably even more horrified to discover a girl named Chris. I'd almost bet he's called Christopher now.