Names are interesting. They are (in general) the one permanent thing about us that someone else has chosen. Our parents, knowing nothing about us, saddle us with these monikers, and we grow up with them. How do they change us? How might we have been different, had we been given a different name? And for those who change their names, why do they change them, what do they change to, and why did they pick the new name?
Perhaps because of this fascination (along with the fact that I have trouble remembering the names of people I meet), names sometimes get stuck in my head. Names like Heiliger Dankgesang and Sandra Day O’Connor will drop into my head from nowhere and stick around for days, like that annoying song stuck in your head.
The other day, it was Yngwie Malmsteen. I mentioned this and was immediately told that the guitarists name was actually Yngwie J. Malmsteen (to distinguish him from all the other Yngwie Malmsteens out there), which led to a discussion of middle initials, which led to the question:
What does the R.A. in Kurt R.A. Giambastiani stand for?
Well, it isn’t rheumatoid arthritis.
During my gestation, my parents discussed names. My father wanted to name me Dario which, from my current viewpoint, would have been a killer first name. Imagine Dario Giambastiani on the cover of a book. My mother vetoed this, saying it was too unusual and ethnic (hey, it was the ’50s and “fitting in” was the thing to do). So she picked Kurt, a name that had absolutely no familial resonance, clashed with my surname, and was only marginally less unusual than Dario. Go figger.
When it came to my middle name, my father gave me the same middle name that his own father had: Robert. It was also the first name of my dad’s elder brother.
So it was that I went through the first decades of my life with a hodgepodge of names: Kurt Robert Giambastiani. It was a mouthful, and people screwed up my first name (calling me Kirk, Curtis, or Craig) about as often as they screwed up my last, but when someone called out “Kurt!” I knew they wanted me, and when I heard “Kurt Robert!” it was a sure thing that I was the one in trouble and absolutely no one else.
Then, in 1979, my Grandpa Kelly, my father’s father died. I spoke at his funeral, and helped carry his casket to the grave. All his life, everyone had called him Kelly, but his given name was actually Achilles Robert Giambastiani. My father had been given Achilles as his own middle name, there the name’s travel stopped. My kid brothers both had A-names as their middle name, but neither had been given Achilles.
This, I felt, was not right. This was a bit of family history that I didn’t want to die out.
So I took it. I didn’t announce it, and never really explained it to my family. I just plopped it down there as a second middle name and became its guardian, thinking I’d hold on to it until my siblings had sons of their own and could pass it along. I never officially changed it, so as far as the government is concerned, I’m Kurt Robert Giambastiani, but for all other purposes and especially in my writing, I’m Kurt Robert Achilles Giambastiani.
Which, as one of my smart-ass friends quipped, distinguishes me from all the other Kurt Giambastianis out there. Snark.
Unfortunately, my brothers both had daughters so, when I die, so will Achilles.
Unless it lives on, printed on the spine of my novels.
k
[…] of oiled teak, sweet rum, Old Spice, and salt air. It was also where my Grandpa Kelly (real name: Achilles), took us once each year for a family dinner, his […]
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Very interesting post. If I had been a boy, my father was set on naming me Muggsy (a boxer or wrestler he liked). Thankfully, I turned out to be a girl and the nurse that helped deliver me was named Dana, the first time either parent had seen that as a girl’s name… I feel like I would have had to be tough with a name like Muggsy, maybe a sports writer or action… or of course a boxer!
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Muggsy, as a given name? That’s a new one on me. My wife’s grandfather was “Buster” but that was a nickname, and nothing like his given name (“Arvel”).
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Yes, as a given name…I think you can see why my mom was even more relieved to see that I was a girl. 🙂 He was set on Muggsy… she suggested it be a nickname, but he wanted it as a given. Thankfully I did not have to deal with that!
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Zing…bullet dodged.
BTW, growing up, the name Dana was in transition. I went to grammar school with one boy and two girls by that name.
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Nicely put.
As naming children seems to take on an approach of shooting for the most bizarre sounding or the most bizarrely spelled (i.e. the new spellings of Jordan: Jordin, Jorden, Jordyn, etc.), families are losing the link to the past that comes from giving your child a name from family history.
Many of the five brothers have middle names that appear in our genealogy, including “Valentine” (which happens to coincide with that brother be born on Valentine’s Day).
My son’s middle name is Dean, taken from my father who passed away before the baby was born. My daughter’s name is MacKinnon, which honors the clan from which my husband’s family descended. I had another daughter, who unfortunately passed away as an infant, who received the middle name of Lorraine, which was my mother’s middle name.
We continue to honor our ancestors through naming.
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And then there are the parents who burden their children with really awful names that dog a child through years and years. We’ve all heard them, like the kid I worked with: Brick Wall. How is that not abuse? And the spellings you mentioned, like a Vyvvyenne I came across once. Oy.
Then again, I knew an Alison who married a Mr Wonderland, and took his name. That there’s love.
I’m glad there are some families who still see the tradition and continuity that thoughtful naming provides.
Thanks!
k
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