On my way to Circle K
When I was pregnant with Duke, I was warned not to tell people our planned name for him because people always seem to think they have a right to share their opinion. However, I keep secrets as well as a sieve keeps water, so alas, I told anyone who asked. For me it wasn’t a big deal, Duke’s name is ‘normal’ and fairly common by all standards and I got no foul reactions.
This was not the case with a girlfriend of mine who named her son, Greyson, which frankly is equally as normal and isn’t ringing any bells on my “weird name meter.” However, I think she was told more than once that he’d be picked on or that it was an odd name. (I should note that the thought of calling this child Grey makes me smile deep and I don’t fully know why.) So, anyway, back to my story.
How we as parents pick names for our children varies and how other parents react should be an early indication of the impending “Parent *MY* way or you are WRONG” fun that seems to be the nasty underbelly of parenting. I know a parent who chose her girls names because she liked them AND they sounded good as first and middle together for when she got mad. I know another parent who chose her child’s name because as a teacher she didn’t want her daughter’s name to be the same as ANYONE she taught — which frankly is harder and harder these days. There are trendy names, there are old, family names, there are maiden names used as first names.
I have a general rule that I strive never to react with anything less than glee at the sharing of a child’s name, especially before the child’s birth. I feel it is not my job to impose naming rules on any parent. Also, in remembering the “Do unto others” rule, I all too well remember how I felt when people tried to tell me what to name Duke.
So, it is with that long winded intro that I must share with you a woman I met this weekend. Her name is Cirkl, pronounced Circle. I’m serious. Prince wanted to know if her parents were bad spelling geometry freaks. I voted for seriously high. When I told the Queen Mum, she immediately asked if she was about 40 years old. But no matter, her name was CIRKL!!! As in “circle, circle, dot, dot, now I have my cootie shot.” As in, “I wonder if her husband is PiR Squared.” As in, “Her last name can’t possibly be K can it? Because that would be too cool.”
For the record, I found it absolutely impossible to keep a straight face when everyone was running around and saying, “Have you seen Cirkl?” All I could think about is Duke and if he’d been there he would have pointed and said, “It’s right here. Circle right here.”
January 30th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Um, what was the meaning of the Queen Mum’s comment? A 70’s thing?
Hate the name…I also hate stupid (“creative”) spellings of normal names.
January 30th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Maybe the mother had really good drugs for the birth?
January 31st, 2007 at 6:28 am
I had family that violently reacted to both of my girls’ names prior to birth. For the first one, I stuck to my guns, and she has a beautiful name. My 2nd was to be Salem Gabrielle – Salem as we live in a town by that name, and hubby’s family were original settlers of that town, hence cool first and last names. My mother reacted horribly – “cigarettes and witch trials, that’s all I think when I hear that name”, and often, so that we finally relented and changed the whole name. Of course now I think, maybe if I had named her something that meant Peace she would have been that way.
Funniest part is that I was born during the height of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and was delivered by an Arab dr. and an Israeli dr. My dad wanted desperately to name me Shalom, as that would have been “funny”. My mom would not give in, thank goodness, as a. we’re not Jewish and b. it just wasn’t funny. Yet 25 years later I wanted to give my child a variant of the same name without even realizing it.
January 31st, 2007 at 6:28 am
Oh, and Sarah – I had a friend who named her daughter Aleksus – think Alexis. Yucky yucky spelling!