My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 5, #31, March 13, 2000

PLAYING WITH NAMES

I've always been fascinated with names, and a murder mystery I was just reading, In Big Trouble, by Laura Lippman, showed me a neat game to play with them. The heroine explained that if you wanted to figure out your "soap opera" name, you would put your middle name together with your street name. The name you might use for, er, adventures in the skin trade, would call for something a bit racier; you'd combine the name for your childhood pet with the name of the street you lived on then. That meant that the heroine's oh-so-conventional soap opera name was Esther Bond, while her, um, other name, became Tweetie Shakespeare; her male friend's name would be Midnight Zarzamora.

Of course I had to try that out myself. Depending on which childhood pet and address I used, my unrespectable name might be Cafe au Lait College, or Perky Margaret, which seemed moderately plausible. My son would be Underfoot Linn or Patches Ripley, which kind of work, though not for a guy, I think. Lassie, of course, would work fine, though I think her surname would be Rural Route 1.

The reason these formulas should work is that they blend street names, which tend toward bland respectability, with either middle names, which are usually dignified, or with pet names that are often diminutive and cutesy-poo. The soap opera names should by rights end up boringly WASPish, while the others should be an intriguing blend of the suggestive and the staid.

Pet names are especially likely to be dopey if the kids did the naming. Since they don't know all that many words, they tend to give obvious sorts of names like Fluffy, Sooty, Silky, Slinky and Bootsy (no wonder T.S. Eliot was convinced cats protected their self-esteem by choosing their own secret names). Kids also name pets for their personalities, real or hoped for, which is why there are so many pets named Gypsy, Precious, Sugarpuss, Lady, Sassy or Mischief. All of those would work just fine on the titles of an over 18 sort of video. For guys, names like Rex and King and Sinbad and Scout have a certain dash which would work well too. Put them together with streets named Wyoming, or Killdevil, and they'd be virtual parodies of manliness.

Of course some pet names wouldn't pan out anywhere near that well. Bumblemuffin Harrison, or Furball Forest, or Snagglepuss Washington aren't very appealing, and Pesky Courthouse, Barfy Canal or Pilgrim Church would be downright discouraging for that sort of movie.

Our soap opera names on the other hand are almost guaranteed to be boring, because so often, middle names are how we add dignity and fill out the rhythm of the full name -- there'd be a lot of Anns and Lynns and Alans and Lees. Often we use an obligatory saint's name, or a family surname, or the name of a favorite uncle or grandmother, which give names an oldfashioned, historical ring. Street names also tend toward the conventional, because until recently, when entire subdivisions were given themed street names, we named streets after important people in our town's and country's life. My son would be Friedrichsen Pershing, which has the ring of Prussian militarism. My friends and relations who live in new subdivisions would end up with dignified triple-barrel names like David Sundance Hills and Bryant Hyde Park.

In theory, this game should work, but I haven't had time to test it on a whole lot of people. So, why don't you try it out with your friends and relations and tell me how it comes out? It's fun, and besides, I'm really curious.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

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