What's in a name?
I love the wordy gambols we take in this profession as we plough through some real adventuresome play dates with the alphabet in an attempt to unscramble names of kids we encounter.
Some kidlets bear simple, old fashioned monikers while others get these alphabet assemblies that defy description. Sometimes I joke with them about the name they'll have to spell out to everybody all the time as they sift along through life. They seem to be all right with it. And what the heck, with all the communication tools we have to work with now ... a kid will probably be able to keep his or her name in storage on a phone app or some other easy peasy device that they can just flash in front of the eyes, or a receptor device carried by the reporter that will demystify the name instantly. I expect that fairly soon we won't have to be asking these youngsters "now do you spell that Duane, Dwaine, Dwain, Duwaine, Quane, Diauane or ...? They'll just flash the name and we'll have our answer.
During my recent trip to the Middle East, I encountered some new and exciting names. I ran into little girls named Jawa, Dareen, Taiba, Fouziah, Jouri and Basma with Al Hasawi, Al Jeriwi or Boodai on the end as opposed to Smith or Park. It was fun sorting them out too.
I learned early on that the name game could be a challenge and to never assume anything when it came to spelling or pronunciation.
Having a few tons of Icelanders in my neighbourhood circle, I learned to quickly differentiate the Fionas from the Fijolas. There were women named Suava, Bina, Runa and Sigga and they were great names to have around us along with the guys named Siggy, Derrick, Hjalmer, Valdi and Fitz.
Forget the last names ... I don't have enough space allocated to me to include them.
Now the second and third most popular population base in our little town of 1,500 were either Ukrainian or Polish, so we had a few Tatanias and more confusing alphabet configurations on the last names there too.
So these people got together on occasion. Many got married and had kids. But darn it ... they named them Linda, Carol, Benjamin and well, I kinda found that rather discouraging. Here were the old world Scandinavians and Europeans wanting to suddenly Canadianize their kids. Did they not realize that their names and the names of their mothers, fathers, grandmothers and granddads were actually quite fabulous and romantic sounding name plates?
I know I had grandmothers named Mayme and Phoebe. Not bad, I think. Not too many Phoebes to be found in North America today, even with all our current alphabetical manipulation kids ... no Phoebe.
So hey, no real message to be gleaned from all of this. It's just a casual observation of where we're going with the naming game. By the way, I believe one of the most popular girl names in Saskatchewan this year was Emily, and rightfully so.
If you care to contact Park, you can reach him at [email protected] and that's not [email protected] but you can try it if you want.
