Chapter 6 – What’s in a name?

What’s in a name? A rose with no name will smell just as sweet - William Shakespeare
There is this awesome basketball player called Shamequa Holslaw. My girlfriend an I decided we like that name and when we and a daughter, we would name her Shamequa. More than 10 years later, I was having a conversation with my sister who was complaining that he son is entertaining these ghetto girls in her absence. I asked he, “how do you know the girls were ghetto? Have you ever met them?” Her reply was, ‘No, but they all have these ghetto girls names like Shenqua, la Shawn and Shakeria.” I always thought that this was a very narrow and bigoted statement made by my sister and decided at the time not to mention the name that I have been saving for 10 years to name my daughter in waiting. Imagine my surprise when I read this chapter on the names correlation.

I have long since goggled my own name and found out that is meaning was small or little…..needless to say I was not particularly enthused by this discovery. It did say strong at the very end, but I could not shake the other two categorization. I also found out that my name was in the top five English and German names and, if you consider Pablo to be a translation of Paul then sure enough I am ranked in the top five in Spanish also. I do know that right now, if you forgive the political incorrectness, you do not want to be named Adolf, Saddam or Bin Laden. Ironically, the name Adolf was the fastest rising one in the mid 1930 in Germany and represents a large portion of males name between 1929 to 1942. Hummm, wonder what happened to all those mothers who found out that their beloved Adolf did not indeed represent the fuhrer, but instead the murdered.

When I was a boy, we had a German shepherd named Bingo. He was a fun dog to play with as kids until he grew up and became inconsistent in his behavior. At the height of his lunacy, he randomly attacked two of my friends who have been visiting me since the 3 grade. He literally tore away the flesh from both one of their ankles; it was traumatic to all of us. We tied him up in a mixture of shame and confusion for a few weeks until eventually we released his to a farmer. Well, 5 years passed and the legend of “Bingo” played itself out until one day my dad brought another puppy home for us kids. Needles to say, after little debate, we decided to call him, well, Bingo. Bingo redoux was just as fun and interesting and we had loads of fun with him and the neighborhood kids. At the time, my mom was doing daycare services for a toddler. Apparently, one fine afternoon, when the toddler was playing with Bingo, as he had done for months in the past, the dog attacked him. Needless to say, the toddle was hospitalized and we were all stunned and traumatized, again. And you say names did not mean anything? I would never name another dog Bingo again, for fear of a reincarnation of same in the future. What would you do if you child decided to name his next puppy Bingo?