What's in a name?

Growing up in the very late 50's and early 60's, most girls had "pretty" names... you know, they were all called Susan or Kathy or Patty. My parents had other ideas. They had decided to somehow combine a derivative of my paternal grandmothers name with a complete self identity of my name to come up with Ellen from Helen. All well and fine for them, but did they forget I would have to go through life with this bland name.... somewhere on the line with Gladys or Harriet, certainly not Susie and Patty?

My parents thinking process in naming my brothers and myself all stemmed from the fact that they didn't want any "juniors" in the crowd, nor any names that could be shortened into nicknames. I guess they slipped a little with me, because some of my old buddies call me El.... no not Elle, just El. Ok, I can live with that, because my Mom used to teasingly call me Ellie May after the Beverly Hillbillies character, and I used to have an old boyfriend that used to call me Elle-Belle. So much for the "no nickname" tags. My brothers had it a little easier as they were called Eric, Karl & Kurt. Just how does one shorten those strong german names?

Going to elementary school, there was one other girl with the name Ellen. Yay! The name really existed, here was living proof that there was some other person that shared it with me.
After all, we could never find it posted on anything like the stickers or toothbrushes that were monogrammed with names. And to this day, I still have a hard time finding it.

So I learned to embrace my name, even though I hated it when I was younger, and I found myself collecting things with big "E"s on it. My search does not always disappoint me, because there are other "pretty" names that start with E..... Erin, Emily, Elizabeth...... and "E" is a strong letter, even if Ellen is not a strong name.

So as not to put my child through the same identity crisis I felt, I gave him a popular name, Christopher. It just happens that his name was the number one name of boys born in 1986.
It seemed that every other child in his class was named Christopher. And he hated it. I'll never forget the first time I called "Christopher, its' time for dinner", he shot back at me: " My name is Chris", and it's been that way ever since. By the way, he was 5 at the time.

When it came time for him to graduate from High School last May, he wanted to use "Chris" on his diploma. I tried to tell him that diplomas usually had complete Christian names written on them and nicknames were a no-no. Well, I won round one, but he got me back when it came time to have his name called to pick up his diploma at the ceremony. They used "Chris" and I was so shocked, that I forgot to clap.

What is it about our name that makes us so territorial about its usage? I suppose a lot of it has to do with our personalities. We want to put our best foot forward, and names usually are the first place we start. Our parents, and eventually ourselves, usually have an obligation to use a previous generation family members name in the naming of our children. We try to include grandmas, grandpas, moms and dads.... and I was no exception. My middle name was my Mothers name, and Chris' middle name is that of my nephews, Ryan.

Personally, I have come to realize that it's all in the sing-song way it rolls off the tongue when you say complete names. If the first name is a long one, we tend to shorten the middle name, or at least should. Filing out applications can be a real problem with not enough spaces to fill out two long complete names if the middle name is long.... and Vice versa.

So if you are going through life wondering how in God's name did your folks come up with your name, rest assure that 90% of the population shares your pain. Hey, the way I look at it now, at least they didn't name me Edith... and no offense to all you Edith's out there, it's just a name I assimilate with Archie Bunker... and no one wants that kind of stigma.