Namesakes

Today has been my day to rabidly catch up on all the Christmas present making and buying that I’ve been lax about because of finals. But I’m almost done. Phew!

Anyway, I was reading Diana Wynne Jones’ Charming Life last night when I got to thinking about what I’ll name my (future) kids. Names are important, and I want to give my kids good names. (By “good” let me emphasize that I do not mean “unique,” in the sense of odd names never-before-seen anywhere except 16th-century Kenya. Not that 16th-century Kenyan names are bad.) It’s like naming characters in the stories I write, except the character happens to be my son or daughter and they have to live with the name all their life. So it’s got to be good. And whatever names my wife and I end up choosing, they’ll need to have meaning, whether it be the name itself (roots and such) or a meaning inherited from someone else who also bore that name. I think I was originally named after King Benjamin, and that’s well and good, but I’ve kind of adopted Benjamin Franklin as my main namesake. :)

Just out of curiosity, if any of you were named after people or for certain reasons, feel free to share your story in the comments.

I was named after the character Conor Larkin in Leon Uris’ book Trinity. Whoopity doo. :)

I was named after Alyssa Milano from “Who’s the Boss?”. My mom wanted an ‘A’ name, and liked ‘Alyssa’.

I’m halfway named after my greatgrandma, and halfway after Bach’s wife, Anna Magdalena. Even nerdier, my brother is named after the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Welcome to my family.

Fascinating. I think “Were you named after anyone?” is going to be one of my new standard conversation topics. :)