What's in a name?

Running red light, improper
lane change, no seat belt, 100
pounds of marijuana in casket.

What’s in a name? This can be a problem. For example, my name is Lewis. I have never liked it. My entire name is even worse but that is not for here. No one else in my Elementary School or High School was named Lewis. They all had real names like Jim, Bob, Tom, Dick, Joe, Pete, and such. I always thought Lewis was a sissy name. But I’m not certain I just had a sissy name or if I was really a sissy. And, as I recall, the villain in the book Little Women, I believe was named Lewis. That bothered me for years. Now that Lewis Black is doing so well I feel a little better about things. But anyway, this is not just my problem. I know lots of people who do not like their names for one reason or another. I know a young man named Julian. He wants to be called Jack. He thinks that is more masculine. I also had a friend once named Harold. Harold, for reasons I do not understand, is actually funny. Elmer, too, is funny, as are Louie and Archibald. Anyway, Harold wanted desperately to have a nickname. He was a small Jewish lad from somewhere in the Midwest, St. Louis or Kansas City or someplace like that, and could probably be fairly described as a kind of milquetoast. He wanted to be nicknamed “Spike.” He was serious. Everyone he tried this out on became hysterical.

There are, of course, some names that have problems just built in to them. Dick, comes to mind. Dick, like Harold is just funny to begin with, but as a slang term for penis it becomes even funnier. John, too has come to have its own problem, like “I have to go to the John.” And guys like me, who want to go by Lew, run into the same problem, especially in England. Sometimes it is the context that renders someone’s name problematical. When I was in High School, for example, during WWII, we had a classmate named Adolf. Adolf was an unusual name in the U.S. even then, but in the context of the war, poor Adolf was absolutely miserable, and through no fault of his own. Similarly, we had a girl named Goldie Glasscock. Now having such a name in our rough little town was bad enough, but Goldie also had the misfortune of being blond, nice looking, really stacked, and looking older than her years. I doubt that a day went by that poor Goldie didn’t suffer from her name. Having struggled with Lewis all my life I have developed empathy for people with strange names and never make fun of them. Indeed, I often truly admire them, especially if they are names of longstanding, like Featherstone, Sidebottom, or Snodgrass, or even Hogg, Snipes, Marx, Pratt or Butts. I admire them even more if they have family names that are unusual or embarrassing but refuse to change them.

There are lots of foreign names that Americans regard as terribly funny. But to deal with them I believe is cheating. And it is possible, of course, to change your name if you wish. Many people do, especially people in show business. W. C. Fields I believe was born William Claude Dukinfield. Jack Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky, John Wayne as Marion Robert Morrison, Cary Grant as Archibald Alec Leach, and Marilyn Monroe as Norma Jean Mortenson. Sometimes, especially in the early days of the 20th century, people sometimes changed their names so as to be not easily identified as Jewish. Sometimes people changed their names to make them fit better on a marquee. Sometimes the studios changed their names for them. I don’t know if it makes much sense, but it does seem to me that Norma Jean Mortenson or Benjamin Kubelsky would not have helped. Some people change their names for the simple reason they are too common, or because they don’t like the diminutives. Patricia might not like to be Pat. Joseph John might not like to become J.J., and Theodore might not like being called Teddy. Short of changing your name legally there is not much you can do about your name or nickname. And you don’t always get to pick your nickname, sometimes people just do it for you and you are stuck with it. “Kid Slick,” for example, or “Charlie the Hook,” or “Fat Albert,” or “Red Grange.”

There do seem to be names that are so ideally suited for their purposes as to be virtually magical. Could there possibly be a better name for a football quarterback than Joe Montana? How about Sugar Ray Robinson for a great boxing champion? These names just seem to fit somehow. Billie Jean King for a woman tennis champion? To me it just seems right. And there are nicknames that seem to fit also, think of Satchmo, Satchel, Tiger, Dizzy, Two-Ton Tony, Radar, Cher, Babe, The Little Tramp, Chico, Harpo, and Groucho, and many more.

Often someone changes their name to something so strange, obvious, or common you immediately recognize it as a change. If someone wants to change their name to “Uncle Sam,” for example, or even “Jesus Christ” you would recognize it for what it was. I recently came across the name “Crescent Dragonwagon” that I thought was unusually creative. There really is such a woman, a writer with many books to her credit. I think she is a musician as well. I have no idea what the background of this name change was but she has been successful with it. It wouldn’t do for me, it has too many letters, in general, I like shorter names. Even so, you have to admit it’s a pretty great name.

In rare cases someone has a name that fits them perfectly. Joe Montana I already mentioned, but others as well. I may be entirely wrong about this, but I believe I could pick out of a crowd someone with a name like Polly Pudlak, Bennie Groseclose, Uno Johnson, or Ivan Sebastian, even if they were not wearing their name tags. These strike me as the kinds of names that just have to fit.

I cannot tell you why, but I have envied the name Otis Birdsong since the day I first heard it. He was born Otis Birdsong, actually Otis Lee Birdsong, and as you may know was a great professional basketball player. There is a purity or something about the name that has always attracted me to it. I wish my name could have been Otis Birdsong instead of Lewis Langness, but, then, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much. Otis Birdsong has that ring to it, such a lovely name. I don’t believe a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

“He had a conservative mind but a liberal penis.”
Jon Stewart

TILT:
The octopus is the most highly intelligent invertebrate.