On names and naming - for Zac & Barb

My baby brother and his beautiful bride infanticipated this past July. The baby boy is my seventh nephew, and he comes a year after my parent's first great-grandson. I was very curious to see how the child will be named. I'll never forget how much my brother helped me (he even stayed in my house to care for my toddler on Thanksgiving night when I went into labor with his brother, poor kid!) for all those years when Curt was sick, how he cared for my boys the night they lost their dad, and then all that he did to help my two fatherless boys for so many years afterwards. How very wonderful that he'll finally get to play Santa for his very own baby boy, after all of the years he spent Christmas morning with my little ones! 

My baby brother's name is James John (Paul), but that isn't the name anyone calls him.  

First picture of nephew

I nicknamed him 'Zac' when he was a toddler, since he was my mom's last baby.  My mother had screwed up, you see when she named him.  He wasn't in alphabetical order with the rest of us:

Cindy - David - Janet - Karen - Robert - Ronald.....  
AND ... ZAC!!!

Names are important.  We have many Davids (David Todd, David Scott, David Joseph, Joseph David) and a lot of Josephs (Joseph David, Joseph, Jeffrey Joseph, Kevin Joseph, Ronald Joseph, Stephen Joseph) in both my family and my late husband's family. My mother Antoinette is named for her grandmother Antonia, and we have variations of Anthony (Anton, Antonio, Antonia, Antoinette) on both sides of my family.  

Most of the folks where I live now, especially those I know through church, get mail from the email address based on my nickname.  My family email, however, is the 'Spudzmom', based on a different family nickname. Who is the Spud, you ask?  Well, it's a good story and I know my bro' has probably forgotten most of it, so it's worth remembering. 

When I was pregnant with our first child, we didn't find out the sex of the baby in advance, but my husband and I referred to the unborn child as 'Boris' because we were sure he'd be 'good enough' (remember Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons?) and his dad's family was from the Ukraine. We agreed on 'Stephen' (my godson brother's confirmation name) but we fought like the dickens about a middle name. I wanted 'Joseph' to name him for three of his grandfathers:  his dad's first name, my dad's middle name, and my mom's father. My clueless husband, however, was adamant that he wanted to name his firstborn son after the kid in the ET movie, and would brook no argument on the point.  When Stephen was born by C-section, I'd ripped my IVs out, thrashing on the table when they unexpectedly hit me with nitrous oxide.  As my husband stood beside me with his pants totally soaked in my blood, I told him, "your son's name is Stephen Joseph".  At that point, I could have actually named him 'Boris' and would have gotten no argument!

When I got pregnant the second time, my husband jumped thru hoops because he wanted to name the baby 'William'.  So, he made up one rule after another to force me to bring that name up.  First, he insisted the child's first name couldn't be the same as anyone else in the family.  Then, the name could not start with the letter J (do you have any idea how many great boys' names that rules out!)  As a last resort, he trained our toddler to pat my belly and refer to the unborn child as "my brother, Billy".  Unfortunately for him, he didn't know about my Uncle Bill.  I told him that it was OK for the baby to call the baby 'William' but that it had to be his middle name.  All of the stupid rules he'd stuck us with really limited us in choosing his actual first name.  We both really liked 'Ricky', but that's the name of our brother-in-law.  So we chose 'Patrick' so that we could call him 'Ricky' if 'Billy' didn't stick. 

So, we named him 'Patrick William', but everyone called him 'Billy'. The hospital nurses got really upset, because my records said my name was 'Cynthia' but they had to remember to call me only 'Chrys' and my baby's name said 'Patrick' but they had to call him 'Billy'.  Good thing I didn't introduce them to my brother Robert that we all call 'Shawn' or my baby brother 'James' that we all call 'Zac' or the poor girls would have probably quit.

Anyway, my husband always called the older boy 'Chief' because he let him be the boss of the house. Our second baby was very blonde like his daddy, so he looked like a bald little Mr. Potato Head.  He promptly became 'The Spud'.  When we joined AOL, we were SpudzMom and SpudzDad and I have kept that screen name ever since.

Birthday picture, July 2011