A Rose by any other name might have been . . .

A Rose by any other name might have been . . . Esmeralda

This week's writing prompt was about our name.

I believe that a person’s name is very very important.  Names in the Bible carried significant meaning so naming a new child wasn’t to be taken lightly. When I think about it, it is the first thing that you own in this world. As I began to enter my school years I learned even more the importance of a name. Children are often very cruel. Many times a fellow student got tagged with a hurtful name out of the blue. Brought on by some odd event in the day, an action gone wrong, or an article of clothing the wrong color or style and that kid was forever known as Frog Face, Looser, or Pinky Girl, or in my case, Porky pig and Big Bertha. I learned early in life how to avoid kids who held a potential name calling episode.

Some times adults aren’t much better. Apparently countries have restrictions on naming your child. In Germany, you must be able to tell the gender of the child by the first name, and the name chosen must not negatively affect the well being of the child. Also, you can not use last names or the names of objects or products as first names. In Sweden non-noble families are prevented from giving their children noble names. Denmark’s very strict Law on Personal Names is in place to protect children from having odd names that suit their parents’ fancy. To do this, parents can choose from a list of only 7,000 pre-approved names, some for girls, and some for boys. If you want to name your child something that isn’t on the list, you have to get special permission from your local church and pay a fee. New Zealand doesn’t allow people to name their children anything that “might cause offence to a reasonable person; or is unreasonably long. Most new babies in China are now basically required to be named based on the ability of computer scanners to read those names on national identification cards.

So, in light of all that I guess when the time came for me to enter this world it wasn’t that strange for my parents to wait until they saw me to name me. Of course, with the prior knowledge of my father not even wanting another child it is a wonder I got a name at all. The story passed on to me in bits and pieces goes as follows.

Once it was evident that I was a girl, all the boy names were out. Along with being pretty exhausted from the long pregnancy, delivery and evident dissatisfaction toward her for not producing him a son, my dear mother had to yet again fight to have a say in naming me.

After being all but trotted along side the car to induce her labor by the New Year in order to reap all the First Baby of the New Year gifts that were given back then, I remained a hold out way past Christmas, the New Year Sweepstakes and then five days into 1949. By then I am sure my father was even more convinced, what is the purpose. But On January 5, 1949 late one evening, – baby girl, arrived.

My father had gone down to the nearest pool hall to wallow in his misfortune, spend his last twenty-five cents on a beer and a game of pool. So after being held by my mother, it was told that when the nurse came out, she handed me to mom’s father.

I not sure but I think something was said about babies having to be named before they left the hospital. Mom said for the next three days the conversation went like this. Being the ‘right’ thing to do, i.e. passing on family names, using God parent’s names or carrying on the Sr. or Jr. I or II or III’d tag, all being proper procedure, these names began to surface.

Mom had won the battle when my sister was born with getting out of the Big Carol and Little Carol war. Although my sister did carry Mom’s first name Carol, Pamelia was added and she went by her second name, Pam.

So for me the two grandmother names were up for grabs. Susie Eleanor, Mom’s mother’s name, or Lilly May, on the other side. And just to sweeten the pot seeing that there had been the possibility of me being a Christmas baby, Holly had been thrown in the mix.

Would it be Susie, Lilly? Susie May, Eleanor Lilly, or Holly Lilly? Ah, and the winner is . . . Susan May, with a ‘y’. I guess in all retrospect not getting officially named Susie, which I have never liked and not having to explain too often why the month of May when in fact I was born in January.. I have come to laughingly appreciate the fact that Holly Lilly did not stick. If you say it three times fast a vision of a shapely Hula dancer with flowers in her hair or one of those fruity tropical drinks adorned with a little paper umbrella flashes into mind.

For years I wished I’d been named Susanna. It just rolls off one’s tongue.  It always sounded more endearing, mysterious, embodying a waiflike of a golden-haired girl in a long fluttering blue robin’s egg colored dress skipping in a field of sun drenched daisies tossing her wide brimmed hat into the air above her head with not a care in the world.  Okay, so a girl can dream, can’t she?

A friend some years back decided he would call me, Suz. I liked it, but he was the only one who used it.  Because most people could not pronounce it other than what they saw, and Susie was always said. Ugh . . .So, Susan May it is. Although my last name changed twice, I have arrived back at my beginning, back to the very first thing that was truly mine upon entering this world and the only thing I will take out of this world until my Heavenly Father gives me my new everlasting name that I will be known by forever.

Maybe because in the Word it says that “I am the apple of his eye” I’ll be called His Favorite . . . although it also says, “He who sits in the Heavens laughs”...so it could be Macintosh or Golden Delicious! I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.