It’s a funny name, I know. But names are what we start with and since getting started is the hardest part of any process, I may as well use a funny name to my advantage.
Oh there are funnier names for sure. Crueler names, odder names, more in-your-face names. I went to school with plenty of Butts and Pitts and Wangs. I work with two Anitas, Boner and Poon. Forever linked by those unfortunate labels.
Then there are the phonetically cursed ones. Individuals with names like Bollocher, Pousé, Roeper, even your somewhat common Van Dykes. Poor souls whose names seem fine on paper until read aloud from the school roster or at the DMV.
You’d think generations of immigration, assimilation, and abbreviation would have eradicated these embarrassing surnames from the surface of the earth. Who wants to walk around associated with genitals or fluids every time they check themselves into a hotel?
But names are fickle things. People, rightfully so, get extremely attached. And while they change to a nickname, a pseudonym, a moniker; the root of a name still remains. Even once you change it, it can be hurtful to be reminded of the old. Names have power and you’re not that name anymore.
No, I’m definitely lucky to have a funny name. It’s a conversation starter. Always elicits a chuckle or a ‘huh’. I’ve even gotten some “that-sounds-like-a-famous-person-name”s. I have a soft spot in my heart for those folks. A few kindhearted partners even go so far as to say, “You know, I wouldn’t mind being a ‘Bangs’ one day.” Hint hint. I’d rather embrace a new-age melding of the last names. Something new and equitable, should I ever decide to unite House Bangs with another. Isn’t it nice when altruism aligns with your own selfish want?
Sometimes I wonder how life would be with the plainest names there are. To be a John Smith, a John Williams, or a John Johnson (actually, also sort of odd). That seems nightmarish in a different way. I’m a common man with an obscure name. But to be obscured by the most common of names? That’s rough too. Just think how all those Muhammads feel!
In many ways I have to do something with this name. But then again, don’t we all have to ‘do’ something if you’re born in the 21st century? More people will hear and see and read your name, whether you like it or not, than any of the ancestors that came before you. And at the rate things are going, you better make a good impression soon.
How many conversations and first meetings were derailed by a funny name? Maybe that’s why things are so tense between East and West. Every time both sides sit down to negotiate, neither one can take the name tags seriously!
In the future we’ll all have a number instead. A series of digits so tediously long that you can barely memorize it yourself. They’ll print these on the slate grey jumpsuits we’ll all wear and the numbers will go on and on, wrapping around the back and the front so you don’t know where somebody’s number begins or where it ends. I can’t wait.