In A Name

Names are a funny thing. They're a very personal part of who we are individually - you aren't you without your name. You'd just be a random personage, drifting lazily through life without anyone being able to get your attention unless they beaned you in the back of the head with an empty soda bottle. Everyone would be known as "Hey, you!" And chaos would rule.

But names, by being so personal, can also be an overwhelming source of frustration. That's why it can be so very difficult for parents to come up with a name for their brand new baby. Months of discussion go into picking just exactly the right fit, drawing from cultural and familial influences. Will she love the color purple as much as her mother does, and therefore adore being called "Violet"? Or will the imposition of the name cause her only frustration as society assumes her identity based upon her label? Will she rebel, and begin liking only the color chartreuse, which her mother finds unsightly and will banish from the house, causing the child to dye her hair that awful shade of yellow-green and to begin answering only to "Treusy"?

For me, I hearken back to that frustration when I recall the schoolyard taunts that were tossed my way. When I was a child, I was constantly mocked for my name. “Don’t touch Sunny! She’ll burn you!” the children would scream as they raced around the playground, running to escape my wrath. “I can’t even look at you! It burns! It burns!” A more hurtful soul would have tripped the little fuckers, or tied their shoelaces together and pressed her fingers against their faces to ironically prove once and for all that she wasn't capable of inciting spontaneous combustion, as much as she would like to be. As it was, I ended up just becoming very good at swinging on the swings all by myself.

But childhood antics fade as we enter adulthood. Issues like taxes and making dinner start to outweigh the youthful toils of the mind, and suddenly what was so world-shattering in our youth becomes the tiniest of memories at the back of the mind. Which is why it surprised me, recently, when I was enjoying some Festive Shenanigans with Boyfriend of Amazingness' family that I still bristled at being mocked in such a way. Although I'm now a fully grown adult with taxes and dinner plans taking up oodles of space in my brain, I still puffed up slightly and felt my eyes narrow when a troublesome child regarded me with the same wicked sneer that troublesome children have been perfecting for centuries and said "Sunny, huh? What, do you like, burn people or something?" And then, in the way troublesome children do, he prattled on about it, congratulating himself for his cleverness.

His barb stung me, and left me feeling sour throughout the rest of the afternoon. Which was more attention than the antic was worth in the first place, making me look the fool.

I've digressed.

My point is, names are important.

Which leads me to this:

Public Service Announcement

  

Fellow Humans: Please consider, just for a moment before opening that orifice just south of your nose, that your words have an impact. I assure you that, no matter how clever the joke you might make about someone's name, they've heard it before. I can also assure you that delivering your quip with a giggle doesn't lessen the sting. Somewhere in their past, a child thought up that same clever witticism and tossed it mockingly their way. And some day you're going to push the buttons of someone a hair's breadth from descending into psycosis. When that happens, you may find yourself on the pointy end of a letter opener, or with a staple puller wrapped deftly about your nose. And after hearing you chuckle about "Hey... Serena... That's kinda like Sabrina! Are you, like, a witch or something? Do you know any magic?", no one is going to stop your attacker.

In fact, they may just high-five her before they turn a blind eye to your plight while she turns you into a toad.

Hypothetically, of course.

RaYD,

Sunny

Important Addendum: There is nothing that makes it more okay, either. Popular excuses:

"No, really, I like the name <whatever name they just openly mocked>. My mother/grandmother/first girlfriend was named that."

"But your name is so similar to <random other person who shares all or part of the curious name>. You must have heard it all."

In fact... the only excuse I would accept is this:

"My given name is actually Herbert Von Witherbottom, and my parents insisted I go by 'Herbie the Butt' when I was a child. They said it would make me tolerant." That's a man who deserves to give his jabs.