The blanket’s name is Ned. I didn’t name it, but it’s my blanket, or it was until everybody discovered how nice a waffle weave blanket is – just the right amount of weight yet still breathable. I’m not bitter about it, I just never thought to name it. I wanted one for ten years, and finally ordered it, paid for it, it came to the house, I unpacked it, put it on the bed and you’d think it would be “mine” in the mind of the family, but then my daughter decided that it was Superior To All Blankets and subtlety referred to it as “our” new blanket in discussion, which I let slide for two weeks until at last she said, when I was pulling on one end and she the other, “Let go of Ned!”
“Who’s Ned?”
“The blanket. The blanket’s name is Ned.”
“It doesn’t have a name, it’s my blanket.”
And that was where she won. Right there. Because the blanket did have a name, it was Ned, which she knew it but I didn’t, proof that I didn’t care about the blanket… I didn’t even know it’s name, thus, it was never really mine.
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We have a cat named Loki, because he came to the house filled with a specific brand of potential mischief, which quite quickly morphed into an indefensible charm, so LOKI. We love MARVEL movies, and Tom for a cat was universally agreed upon as what the kids call “basic”, while Hiddleston was just too long with no desirable abbreviations.
When Loki joined the family he gained an older sister, a black cat that we’d named Lucky, because children love irony. It didn’t occur that the cats’ names would rhyme (or lilt or whatever) until just after we’d all agreed on Loki, and by then we couldn’t take it back, because we’d done the whole Lion King thing and held him up and said his name already.
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My name used to be Juanz David Anderson. J - U - A - N - Z. My mother and father divorced shortly before I was born, but being that my mother was a woman in the 1960’s, when she went into labor they immediately set out to find my father to let him know. He was bowling, and filled with Budweiser and toxic masculinity got in his car and decided to create a name to extend his legacy. The choicest hops and barley, combined with the names of his two older brothers, John and Lawrence, set up an Arrested Development style scene where he mouthed the two over and over until he came upon a sound that would define my first decade of existence.
John. Lawrence. Jourence. Juanz.
No idea where the z came from, but my father was convinced this was a name fit for a King (of Beers). He told it to the nurse who was outside my mother’s delivery room door, where she had, as was custom, been rendered entirely unconscious for the procedure and was unable to comment. But before her nap, my mother had emphatically locked in my middle name; David, same as my Grandfather and I believe several generations before that. Sturdy and biblical, it would balance the Boggle-based randomness of my first name for some time.
I never had a chance to use David as my name in grade school because I went to the same school until seventh grade. Everybody knew me already and had learned to pronounce it. My good friends could even spell it. But I was not satisfied, and dreamed of superior nomenclature. I knew that Gene Kelly’s real name was Eugene, and that Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach. I wanted to be an author, so I asked my mom if I could have a pen name, or a stage name, and she not only agreed but said that when I was older I could even change my name.
Well.
Influenced by the best in arts and culture, I asked my mother if I could be named “Han”. No. Chewie was also out (though later on I did meet a guy named Chewie). She countered with Luke, also biblical but a bit of an interstellar crybaby if you asked me.
I discovered that Dynamite Magazine, the grade school Scholastic magazine that I subscribed to, could have ANY NAME on it and STILL COME TO YOUR ADDRESS. I used it to experiment with names, until I found the one that looked best on a direct mail label.
So in 8th grade, when I went to my new school, my mom said I could present myself as my new name. First day there, all of us in the gym, roll call.
“Angela?”
“ – Call me Angie!”
“…ok…” said the teacher, scribbling on the ledger. “Robert?”
“I’m Bobby!”
“…ok…”
Scribble scribble scribble.
“J—“ and here the pause that I recognized as part of my name, while synapses flashed supernova-hot to try to create order from chaos. “Jwa-jhewhan-zee?”
“Call me…” (pause for effect) “Brandon Michael Chase.”
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The principals office was nice. He was rarely there, so most of the time you ended up speaking to the women in the office. They ran the school (I saw them often, but just for fun, really, I didn’t cause much actual trouble).
As this was my first visit, and I was there for clarification rather than punishment, they were very nice to me and there may have even been a cookie exchanged. I explained that my mother said it was ok for me to be called by my new name and they said they just couldn’t do it because, well not in their words but, my selected label was in no way a derivative of what was on my government paperwork, which they were bound to follow.
“But I have a cousin who’s J.D., he uses initials… you could do that too – it looks just like this…”
And she wrote down, in blue ballpoint pen, a capital J, period, and a capital D, period. I still had to keep my last name.
But three years later in a junior year trigonometry class I got an idea… get rid of the periods, lower case the d, smash it all together and just spell my name the same way everybody else does. This was the turning point, because that summer I was cast in a show at Worlds of Fun, the local amusement park, and they allowed STAGE NAMES for their performers! I pulled Michaels from the original suggestion and we had a winner. The next year I was 16 and could legally change my name because I had been using it professionally for a year.
Now, free climbing through my fifties, I’ve given my name to two other people to see what they can do with it. It is weird to have your name evolve, but we all evolve so why not have different names?
No wonder I love Doctor Who so much.
Anyway, just to clear the record; Lando? Never even on the table; and given how the 80’s worked out for some comedy legends I probably would not have enjoyed being a “Chase” forever (though I do admit that would be a pretty cool first name if we, y’know, ever adopt another cat).
©2022 Jd Michaels.
Six Names Of Four Things.