Nicknames

For how much I am loathe to admit it, Dances With Wolves (DwW) plays a rather large part of the daily language between my husband and I. I dislike Kevin Costner. I have never seen him in a performance where I felt anything from him except pure amazement at his rise to stardom. How the...What the...And yet, he has made it into the daily lexicon of our marriage. This is how: Sam announces, "I'm going up to bed." And I reply, "Yeah, so am I." And he stops and says, "Say it correctly." And I have to pause, and gesture between us, and say, "I go where you go."

But, truthfully, the DwW phenom sort of started before Sam came along. After seeing that movie, I began the curious and somewhat annoying habit of giving people fake Indian names based on watching their behavior. And conversely, I have also been dubbed a few names in my life. My husband suffers from low blood sugar-induced snarkiness is named Lashes Out At Loved Ones. My mother is Travels With Ham, since any visit involves my mother obsessively insisting that we need a ham and she will bring it. Our in-house graphic designer became Dances with Exactos. And I was baptized many years ago as Many Bourbons. My life has changed a lot, and it has been a long long time since I drank even one bourbon. Oh, I joke about it, but that is because I come from Irish people who think drinking jokes are hi-larious. It is the Dean Martin School of Comedy, but truth of it is, I need a new name. I have considered Alphabetizes the Rocks or Cries a River, which sounds vaguely like a Monty Python name. Sir Cry Alot.

If the fake Indian name doesn't work, then I usually go with a rap name. My friend Kathy McGuire* is henceforth known as K-Mac. My rap name is A to the G. My sister is DJ Fancy Pants. My sister many years ago, created an alterego who is Japan's Pop Sweetheart named Sweetie Pumpkin Kitty Cardigan, but it is simply by dint of her fabulosity that she gets a Japanese name.

Anyway, since being cleared in the amnio and finding out we are having a boy, the moratorium on name talk has been lifted. As previously demonstrated, I have extensive experience giving people goofy names, but naming someone, I mean, naming naming them is overwhelming me. We have had some, uh, heated discussions on naming our little bub. The issues surround the fact that I am a rational person with extraordinary taste in names, and my husband is insane. Funnily, we basically picked Bea and Lucy's name immediately, but boy names...oy, vey. Boy names are much more complex, mainly because cute is not so cute on a man with a beard. And quirky ends up being alienating. We are currently stuck on just naming him after our fathers. But privately, we call our fetus Thor. Now that Thor has been normalized as a name in our home, I argue that it would make a fantastic name for him. American convention be damned. It has everything--strength, coolness, pronunciation ease, fun, integrity...you know, everything, except public acceptance. Sam, on the other hand, thinks we should name him something normal, and call him Thor as a nickname. During dinner last night, he went through a litany of men he has known with great nicknames that have nothing to do with their real name: Turk, Boo, Bub, Win...Have I mentioned my husband and I are a multi-cultural family? I am a Yankee and he is Southern. I often stare slackjawed at him as he tells childhood stories, not because of the craziness of the escapades, but because I get stuck on the fact that someone named their child Snookey. In fact, my husband is actually referred to as his middle name, which is confusing to people here, but makes perfect sense in the strange land from whence he is comes. I really have no place. Our male family name is Durward, and my grandmother had two brothers who called her Sis. So, I grew up with much of my family referring to my grandmother as Aunt Sis. The mind reels. I already have a fake Indian name for Thor, which is Scares the Hell out of his Mother.

So, here are a few questions for you. If you had to choose between a fake Indian name and a rap name, which would you choose? And what would it be? And what is your position on nicknames v. name names? And any other insights on naming?

*not her real name.