My motives for writing this blog are purely selfish. I have spent the last six years of my life substituting for absent school secretaries and office managers in elementary schools. My first task each morning is to write tardy slips for latecomers. I ask each child to tell me their name, and I write the name on the tardy slip. They may say “Julie.” So I write “Julie.” “No,” they say. “Not like that. It’s J-E-W-E-L and then a ‘line’ and then E.” I write out “Jewel-e” – and I think, what were the parents thinking here? Don’t they realize that no one on the face of the planet is going to spell that correctly when they hear it? Doesn’t the thought enter their heads as they’re gazing on the face of that sweet infant in the hospital that every time that kid is late for school, some poor secretary is going to have to cross off “Julie” and write “Jewel-e,” wasting her precious time – which she will need to fill out Samyul’s, Kenidee’s, Leica’s, Zachgary’s, Maecin’s, and Eian’s tardy slips? Yes, not giving your child a stupid name will be of benefit to the child as well, but that doesn’t really matter to me. I would just really like to go to work someday and have the world make sense again. I want to say, “What’s your name?” and hear, “Michael” and be able to confidently write “Michael” and not hear, “No, not like that. It’s…” Is that so much to ask?

Enjoy my blog. Laugh at the strange names. Laugh at the idiot parents who gave these names to their kids. Whatever you do, just do NOT put any of these names on a birth certificate!

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Making stuff up

I haven't posted in a while, and that's mostly because I haven't played school secretary for quite a few months. I've recently returned to subbing, this time in a high school attendance office. Here are a few names I saw today: Jordynn, Breuna and Bryanna (could both be pronounced "Bree-ahna" but your guess is as good as mine), Alixandria, Maloree, Khaner, and Morticia. I'm not too offended by Jordynn, but I feel sorry for this kid. She (I would have been more upset if this had been a boy's name) will always have to correct the school secretary AFTER she's written "Jordan" because no one would think there is an alternate spelling for this name. Alixandria and Maloree will have the same problem. Khaner can try blurting out "with a K - and then an H - and an A instead of an O - and just one N - and then E-R. But by then the secretary will have erased a hole in the tardy slip. He just better never be late. I don't know what to say about Morticia's parents. Obviously they watched a few too many Adams Family episodes, but I think there may be a deeper, darker problem here. The name I really want to talk about today is Taje Arzenia. This is the first and middle name of a boy of African-American descent. I'm pretty sure his parents made up the name. And as I thought about the many made-up names I've seen in my school secretary days, I realized that most of them belong to African-American children. I thought about why that might be. I believe it's actually a consequence of slavery. Parents with ancestry in Europe or South America or Asia can usually trace their lineage back at least a few generations and often choose family names to pass down to their children. They usually know something of the culture of their country of origin and many of the common names used there. Slaves were ripped from their native countries and lost connection with their culture. Upon arriving in America, many were separated from their own parents and siblings. They were given American names, sometimes even the names of their masters. I'm sure it didn't long for these African-Americans to forget who they were. You can't name someone "after" someone else if you don't know who the "someone else" is. You can't give a daughter a beautiful name meaning "flower" or "flowing river" in the language of your native country if you don't know your native country. You can't give a boy a heroic name from legend if you have no legends. It's no wonder many African-Americans make up names for their children. Because I do not want to offend anyone, I will not be criticizing many made-up names on my blog. I will, however, make exceptions for the ones that can't easily be pronounced when seen or spelled when heard. No one gets a pass on these criteria! But I'm leaving Taje Arzenia alone.
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