Tag: Names

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Say My Name

Once again, Holmes had found his way onto a kitchen chair. And while it looked cute to have his fuzzy black canine head peeking above the table, some things Cannot Be Allowed™.

“Oliver! Down!”

Oliver? Where’d that come from? Oh, yeah, my sister-in-law’s dog. Try again.

“Blake! Get off!”

Blake? Big Blake hadn’t been in the house since last summer, when he passed away at 15.

“Oli … Bla … Hol … whoever you are, get over here!”

I’ve heard of this happening to parents, but it’s a first for Heather and me when it comes to pets. And other than the fact that all three are or were black dogs in occasional need of correction, they don’t have that much in common. They’ve never even been in the same house at the same time.

But reflex is strong. So when you need something quickly in the moment, you reach for whatever comes to hand first. Whether it fits or not.

But of course, the wrong name gets you nowhere.

Call a dog by the wrong name and they’ll be either oblivious or confused.

Get a name wrong in the newspaper and you’ll see upset phone calls or emails.

Using the wrong name in a conversation may draw laughter, frustration or outright offense.

Names matter. They’re tied into who we are and how we see ourselves. And they have a power beyond just commanding a dog to “sit!”

My wife’s middle name is Lyn. It ties into her mother’s name (Debra Lyn) and her grandmother’s (Marilyn). It’s a part of her heritage.

My own name was the product of a hasty family compromise: Dad wanted to name me “Walter,” Mom and Grandma hated it, and suggested naming me after him instead.

Some of my friends have been known by a nickname for most of their life. Others I know changed names as they grew up or changed circumstances: a BJ who became Brad, a Michael who became Kavya and so on.

It’s something fundamental.

But then, we’re good at getting fundamental things wrong. Especially when we act on reflex.

All of us have a story we tell ourselves about the world  and everything in it: beliefs, expectations, preconceptions. And inevitably, we bump up against something that doesn’t fit. What we do next says a lot about ourselves:

  1. We can look at the mismatch, see where we got it wrong, correct ourselves with a shake of the head, and go on a little wiser.
  2. We can decide we know better, keep insisting on our version of reality and wonder why the rest of the world is bring so stubborn.

Looking at the world today, we seem to have a lot of people in group B. And that’s a recipe for trouble. Sure, it feels good to tell yourself what you want to hear, but if you’re not calling something what it is, you’re not going to make progress.

And when a bunch of mutually exclusive versions of reality bump up against each other? You only have to look at the headlines to see the result of that.

Naturally, we may all draw different conclusions from the same facts. That’s human, and it can even be helpful. But when we can’t even agree on the facts … well, that’s where the problem arises.

So don’t always trust the reflex. Take a step back and think. It’s not always easy – sometimes even outirght uncomfortable – but it gets you farther in the long run.

Just ask Oli …I mean Bla …

Sorry, little buddy. Sooner or later, I’ll find the way Holmes.

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Triple Your T-Rex, Triple Your Fun

It sounds like a question you’d ask a 6-year-old: What’s cooler than having one kind of tyrannosaur?

“Three kinds of tyrannosaur!”

No, this isn’t the latest Michael Crichton movie, but an honest-to-goodness paleontological debate. According to the New York Times, there’s now heated discussion going on over whether our records of the much-loved Tyrannosaurus Rex actually show three different species. Taking on the royal tradition, a new paper suggests calling them T. Rex (“king”), T. Regina (“queen”) and T. Imperator (“emperor).

It’s not that simple, of course.  Classification never is. To the critics, the differences are just individual variation – sort of like if you tried to suggest that LeBron James and Peter Dinklage were different species.

So what’s the big deal? A name’s a name, right?

But names do matter.

We know it in conversation. There’s no faster way to embarrass yourself than to call a person by the wrong name.

We see it in the news, whether it’s laughter over the polar vessel  that got popularly dubbed “Boaty McBoatFace” or disbelief about labeling a war a “special operation.”

It’s part of any field that someone cares about, from the serious to the silly. What do we call the high-school football team? Is Pluto really a planet? Is that superhero in the red costume called Shazam or Captain Marvel?

At any level, names are wrapped up in identity, memory and how we see the world. And when a piece of that changes – when something that you’ve “always known” might no longer be true – it can be a little unsettling.

And that reaches to a different level of the dinosaur story: the importance of examining what we think we know.

T-Rex might stay just as it is. It might become three species, or 20. For most of us, life will still go on as usual, aside from the occasional museum trip.

But the important thing is that it’s being looked at, studied, discussed. Something thought to be true for over a hundred years is getting a second look.

That’s the part we can learn from. And it’s something we don’t do well as a species.

In public, we like to praise the consistent, the unbending, the firm. Any sign of change or uncertainty quickly gets mocked as weak or wishy-washy. Psychological studies suggest that we typically use our reason to win arguments rather than seek the truth, clinging fast to what we believe and seeing challenges to our assumptions as an insult.

That sort of confirmation bias is hard to break out of. It’s easy to hear only what you want to hear and dismiss everything else. It’s a comfortable world to live in … and a dangerous one, like driving a highway with your eyes closed because you know what the road ahead looks like.

It’s only when we question what we think that we can really understand each other. When you’re “always right,” no one else matters. If you let in the possibility that you might be wrong, then it becomes important to see new perspectives and consider other views. To let each other in, working together instead of at odds.

That opens up the world, and the heart with it.

Take the chance. Ask the question. Learn what’s valuable and leave the fossilized beliefs behind with the T-Rex.

However many there happen to be.

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Elementary, My Dear Auto

Leroy has us on the move at last.

Some of you may remember that our car came to an untimely end last month. That prompted a lot of research for a new vehicle – price, mileage, and all the other crucial factors that go into acquiring a new family chariot. And once we finally made that fateful choice, all our friends wanted to know the same thing.

“So, what are you going to name it?”

Ooh. The big questions.

As I’ve mentioned before, naming a car is not an insignificant decision. We’ve known several in our life from the Battered Blue Buick – christened after a major Kansas hail storm – to the E-Z Bake Oven, which was seemingly designed to magnify heat. Mozart was a Sonata whose life ended too soon, while Harvey Dent was hit in the driveway on its third day with us, temporarily giving it a polished look on one side and a mix of torn metal and a shattered turn signal on the other.

So there’s a bit of history involved. Which is why, as with certain baby naming traditions, we took several days deciding.

It was Mom who put us on the right track, shortly after we’d clarified to a friend that the car was dark brown and not black.

“Well, all I can think of right now is Encyclopedia Brown references because of the color,” she said.

And that’s when it clicked.

Hello, Leroy.

Like all the best names, “Leroy Brown” has multiple meanings. In an odd way, it has a tie to when I first started driving in the early 1990s. One week, the local oldies station was even more predictable than usual, and would play Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” just after school let out, filling the speaker’s with that infectious rhythm.

But Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown is a tie to my childhood. Some of the first books I ever got under the Christmas tree involved the mysteries of Idaville’s greatest boy detective and his friend Sally Kimball. The pattern was always the same – a setup that took five minutes or less, a break at the crucial moment to see if you’d spotted the error or inconsistency that would unravel the case, and then a quick flip to the back of the book to check your answer.

In retrospect, maybe that’s how the seeds of a journalist got planted in my head in the first place. All the key questions were there: did the facts as presented make sense? What was the person really saying? And why did anyone trust Bugs Meany after all this time? (OK, maybe not that last one.)

Call it curiosity. Or skepticism. Or just thinking things through instead of taking them at face value.

By any name, it’s an attitude we still need.

Plenty of dubious claims get made every day, and they’re easier to spread than ever. Most of them are about as transparent as one of Bugs Meany’s schemes – if you bother to take 30 seconds to check. But many people don’t.

Maybe it’s because the person saying it has an important title and a famous name.

Maybe it’s because it was bundled with a cute infographic and a provocative headline.

Maybe it’s just because it seems to confirm what the person already believes – why check what you “know” to be true?

Always check. Always confirm. Even when – no, especially when the claim seems to boost your own side. It’s frustrating when you’re wrong. But it’s downright embarrassing when you’ve committed to it, and a lot harder to pull back from.

If a rolling brown Hyundai helps me keep that in mind, so much the better.

Just as long as it doesn’t end up like the other Leroy Brown.  You know, the one that looked like “a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.”

Let’s stick to cracking cases – OK?

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Household Name

Once upon a time, there was Harold, my sister-in-law’s alleged car.

Harold had four wheels, and he would get you where you were going … most of the time. During the exceptions, you couldn’t help wondering if Fred Flintstone’s leg-powered rockmobile wouldn’t have been a better bet. After all, you always knew that your two feet were going to work. The same couldn’t be said of Harold’s less-than-mighty engine.

And yet, despite this infamous standing – maybe even because of it –  Harold had a name. That was never in question. In fact, we had ourselves an unexpected laugh when a card game about apartment living turned up a card called “Harold the Hoopty Car” – a confirmation from the universe that yes, this was actually meant to be.

Some of you, I suspect, are nodding. You know what I’m talking about. You, or someone you know, has christened metal and steel and given it life, like a gasoline-powered Frankenstein.

Heck, we even have our own day.

That, at least, should come as no surprise. When you live in the United States, it seems like everything under the sun has its own day, week or even month. I’ve written about Banned Books Week (Sept. 25 – Oct. 1) and organized Longmont Power & Communications contests for Public Power Week (Oct. 2 – Oct. 8 – is your entry in yet?). Some I know, but keep forgetting about, like National Procrastination Week in March (I’ll get to it next year).

And every year, there’s some odd day that surprises me. Such a day is October 2 – National Name Your Car Day.

Yes, really.

I don’t know who created it. I really don’t know why. But I couldn’t be happier. After all, it’s an impulse I’ve surrendered to more than once myself.

Granted, my vehicle nomenclature hasn’t usually been as dramatic as Michael Knight’s Kitt Car, or even Herbie the Love Bug. Although there was my sister Leslie’s declaration of the Masterful Audi of Death, a used car my family had when we were teenagers. The MAD sounded ominous, but in truth, the death it pursued was mostly its own as it became caught in an ever-increasing spiral of repairs and maintenance needs. We learned a lot from that car – mostly about the need to get a vehicle at the right moment of its life cycle.

The Battered Blue Buick, more ordinary in name, was no less mythic in structure. It gained its name from a Garden City, Kansas hailstorm that produced a lot of cosmetic damage, a nice insurance check, and no impediment whatsoever to its vital functions. It would actually take a major elm tree branch to bring it down, courtesy of a Kansas ice storm.

And so it’s mostly been since. Some have been named for appearances, like my sister-in-law’s Goldfinger, others for a vital quality, like our old Chevy that a friend dubbed the E-Z Bake Oven after a hot summer’s drive. We’ve even occasionally extended the privilege to other products, like the Qosmio laptop that my wife Heather dubbed “Quasimodo.”

It’s an odd tendency. But it makes sense. What we name tends to have a story attached, or sometimes even what feels like a personality. It’s something we can argue with, complain to, even plead with. (“Come on, Harold, just one more mile.”) It gives us the feeling that we can somehow control this assemblage of glass and steel that our lives so often depend on.

And when we’ve moved on, that name means it sticks in the memory a little harder.

I like that. I like having more stories, more memories. They help us not just exist, but live, paying a little more attention to the world around us and how we move through it.

As I write this, it strikes me that Heather and I have never given the Sonata a name. Maybe Mozart would be fitting – brilliant, a host to much music, a little cracked – though in car years, it’s already outlived its namesake.

We could even honor my sister-in-law’s long-gone car. But I wouldn’t want to invoke its luck as well, on this vehicle or any to come.

Our auto that art in future, Harold be not thy name.

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Right Out of Their ‘Skins

I’ve thought about a dozen cute openings for this column. I’m not using any of them. The way I see it, if I’m just going to tick everyone off anyway, I may as well not waste any time.

Yes, I think the Washington Redskins should change their name.

And no, it’s probably not for the reasons you’re thinking.

By now, it seems like everyone’s weighed in on the ‘Skins, from President Obama on down to the Friday night pizza guy. (“So that’ll be a two-liter, extra cheese and hold the epithets?”) Now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has added to the pile-on, declaring Washington’s trademark invalid. Well, once it goes through the appeals process anyway, which at the current pace of the American legal system, should resolve everything by the time Chelsea Clinton’s grandchild is holding office. But it’s the thought that counts.

Now, this is the part where you’re expecting to hear the back-and-forth you’ve heard dozens of times before. And that’s the trouble. You’ve heard it.

You’ve heard the charge that “Redskins” is a racist epithet, that a team name shouldn’t be a word you’d be embarrassed to use in casual conversation.

You’ve heard the counter-charge that “Redskins” doesn’t mean anything but a football team to most people these days.

You’ve heard the famous names opposing it and defending it, the reports that say Native Americans are deeply offended by it, the reports that say they don’t really care.

And after hearing all of it, most folks haven’t really changed their minds. If anything, they’ve fortified their positions.

So I’m going to take a different tack.

“Redskins” needs to go because it’s dumb marketing.

Let me take you back to the last time there was a controversy over the Denver Broncos’ name. Do you remember the people marching in the streets, the impassioned speeches, the critical commentary on regional and national TV?

Of course you don’t. And there’s a reason. It didn’t happen“Broncos” is not the sort of name that inspires controversy. (For that, you want something like “Sports Authority Field at Mile High” … but I digress.)

I know the rule that any kind of publicity is good publicity. But let’s think for a second. An NFL team is an expensive proposition, a multi-million dollar business that’s constantly in the public eye. What kind of conversations do you want people to be having about you?

Do you want them to talk about your players, your trades, your wins and losses, your old coach, your new stars?

Or do you want them getting into flame wars over your name once or twice a decade?

In most other industries, this wouldn’t be an issue. A name that gets in the way of marketing a product is a bad name. If enough customers are turned off by a logo, a color, a product line, out it goes. (New Coke, anyone?) It doesn’t even have to be a majority – just enough to give your company a bad rep.

And from that perspective, the current name of Washington’s football team is one that’s run its course. Yes, ditching it will cause grumbles, but those will eventually die down. (Right, Tennessee Oilers … I mean, Titans?) Keeping it means everyone gets to go through this cycle again and again and again.

At some point, it’s just not worth it.

Of course, if the owners agree, that does leave us with the issue of what the new name should be. This could be a fantastic marketing opportunity by itself, getting fans new and old to come together and find an identity that sums up the essence, the core, the heart of what Washington, D.C. means to people today.

Is “the Gridlocks” taken?

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Name Dropping

When you work for a newspaper, one thing you get used to is odd baby names.

Sometimes it’s a twist in spelling, like the Sheila named “Shelia.” Or a rising trend, like those angels in a mirror named “Nevaeh.” At one point, place names like Madison or Montana began to take off; a co-worker teased that if kids were going to be labeled with their place of origin, we might see “Chevrolet” before too long.

You smile. Sometimes you laugh. Once in a great while, you wonder what the parents were thinking. (“Marion Butts? Really?”)

But the honorable Lu Ann Ballew didn’t stop at wondering. The Tennessee judge acted, saying a family had no right to name its child “Messiah.”

“The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has been earned by only one person,” Bellew declared in resetting the baby’s name to “Martin.”

Psst. No one tell her about all the Latino families who have named their children “Jesus,” OK?

The thing is, we’ve been here before. Usually with a foreign court. The one that sticks in my mind is the New Zealand judge who barred a family from naming their child “4real Wheaton.” This act of humanity clearly saved a young boy from years of humiliation and ridicule … or at least, it might have, if Mom and Dad’s backup choice hadn’t been “Superman.”

Phone booth not included.

What can I say? Names are powerful, even the ones that don’t happen to come from Krypton. They reflect who we are. Sometimes they even shape it. They show our hopes and dreams, our values and fancies, maybe even our incipient insanity.

And trust me. Trying to block that force is an exercise in futility.

Don’t like titles as a name? Watch out for Fletcher (maker of arrows), Chandler (candle maker) or Tanner.

No religious exclamations? Then thou shalt not touch Elizabeth (“Oath of God”), Michael (“Who is Like God?”) or Joshua (“God is Salvation”).  Never mind the bus driver a few years ago who legally changed his name to In God We Trust.

We’ve used virtues from Chastity to Justice. We’ve used place names, plant names, colors, promises of royalty. We’ve even hit the produce aisle at the supermarket, not just with the infamous “Apple,” but with more time-tested monikers like Cherry.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure that any name out there can really qualify as unusual anymore. Though I’m still grateful to my parents for not naming me “Walter.” (Sorry, Mr. Disney.)

I’m not saying that naming a child should be a frivolous exercise. Quite the opposite. With great power comes great responsibility as Peter Parker (“Rock Forest Ranger”) once declared. And probably a great number of arguments as well, as Mom and Dad swerve between trying to be unique and trying to avoid getting a child beaten on the playground.

But such a powerful choice must be a personal one. It’s really not a place for a judge, except by invitation.

So thank you, your honor. Thanks for recognizing how important a name is. But I think the rest of us can take it from here.

And if we wind up with the occasional Picabo Street, or Moon Unit Zapppa, or even Messiah (762 boys last year, according to the New York Times), well, so be it.

After all, that’s the name of the game.