Wednesday, November 06, 2002

I was going to be

I was going to be named David.  My maternal uncle Dick (yes that’s right, maternal dick, he has ovaries and an inviting bosom, don’t make this more difficult for him than it already is) and his wife, my inestimable aunt Bunny, had their first-born just three months before I was due to make my debut and they named him David.  Not wanting to get everything remonogrammed (I guess), my folks opted for a name as little different from David’s as it could be without being a crass homage to his newly mewling self.  So they picked Daniel.  All my life it’s been a milquetoast kind of name for me, Dan Danny Daniel Dannyboy all these names have seemed to me to lack any implication, any subtext that might suggest some character trait.  My sister Eve (now Evi) always had a name with some panache.  “John/Jon” suggests stability to me.  “David”, nobility.  “Brian,” althleticism.  I don’t know where I came up with these associations, but many names have been linked in my feverish mind to some kind of personal quality or condition - sometimes positive, sometimes neutral, sometimes best left unstated (Hey Shmuel, your name sounds like stuff I scrape off my mudflaps!).  But the two weird things for me are: 1) all my life, people I don’t know well have called me David.  They don’t know the story of my purloined name (I said loin), they just make a natural association which I find inexplicable but can’t deny.  Then again, 2) lately people have been saying my name in a way that seems to bear some kind of implication.  I can’t tell what kind, but it doesn’t seem to be negative.  Nicknames that always seemed fey or insincere or just to be clumsy fabrications are now sometimes employed in a way that seems normal and natural, even complimentary.  Maybe I’m finally taking possession of my own name.  But people are still calling me David on an amusingly regular basis.