If your name is as common as mine (David Mark Brown), then you’ll understand the impulse to equip your children with less common monikers. I get collection calls on a weekly basis. The worst part is that none of them are actually for me. (Maybe that’s the best part?) I gave up answering them, because the people on the other end of the line would never take my number off their list, no matter the proof I offered of my identity. (Not even my underwear size would qualify as personal enough.)
A typical call would go something like this:
Caller: David Brown?
Me: Yes.
Caller: David Mark Brown?
Me: Yes, that’s me.
Caller: Sir, I’m calling today to…
Me: What’s the social?
Caller: Excuse me?
Me: The social security number for the person you are looking for? The last four digits?
Caller: Ummm…
Me: Not me. I’m a blankity-blank-year-old Libra living in Idaho with no debt what-so-ever.
Caller: Uh, sir, if you would be willing to…
Me: Please remove my number from your list. You’re looking for one of the other 28,000 David Mark Browns.
Then I’d hang up knowing someone else from the same collections agency would call me the next day. It gets annoying pretty quickly.
So, when it came to naming my kids, I leaned toward more unique labels. For a girl, I’ve always liked the name, Dia. (Although, now that I think of it, DIA feels a bit too close to a combination of MIA and DOA.) Hmmm, I also like Rio. Of course, the first time I listed off these names, the wife heard them together and laughed at me. “We are not naming our daughter Dia Rio.” “Why,” I asked. “Are you kidding me? It sounds just like diarrhea.”
That was the death of both names. My backup? Dagmar.
Or what about Cinnamon (Cinn for short)? Sugar? Last name first would be Brown, Sugar. Meh, I guess it doesn’t matter. We ended up with two boys. The first one came with a name. That made things a bit simpler. But his given name included “Hung.” I still can’t help but think of the actor, Long Duk Dong. The wife agreed that “Hung” was worse than anything I could have suggested, so we changed it.
For the second kid, we had to come up with a moniker from scratch. I could think of only one name worthy of my second son. A name so bold and epic that entire odysseys have been written about him. Of course, I suggested the name, “Homer.” The fact he would share the same given name as Homer Simpson was icing on the cake. Just think about his athletic nickname! His teammates would have no choice but to call him Ho Bro. Hmmm, anyway, the wife quickly declared me persona non grata and voted me out of the process.
But who am I kidding? Dads never really matter in the whole naming process. If my dad would have succeeded in his naming intentions for me, I would have been Amos Moses Brown. I mean, it might not roll off the tongue with the greatest of ease, but I rather like the name Amos. It certainly wouldn’t have been anywhere near as common as David Mark. Who knows, it might have helped me with my jump shot. At the very least, it would have been one hell of a preacher name.
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