During the long drawn-out negotiations over Ada’s name, all of us noted that whatever we chose, we’d undoubtedly prove to be part of some wider trend in names. For instance, my parents chose “Daniel” because they thought it sounded “international” – not really tied to a place, but still quite Irish. I’m not sure everyone would agree on the thought, but many agreed with a decision. Within a couple of years of me, everybody was called Daniel. Or so it seemed. My parents were fractionally ahead of the curve, at least in my town. I was often the only Dan* in my class, but the year below was clogged with us. Poor boys barely out of nursery had to fight among themselves over who got Dan, Danny, Danno, Danzy and (once Daniel-overload had hit), Spider, Spud and Bazz.
It’s not like anyone was out to rip off their friends or be part of some big “Parents of Danny” mob. Everyone aspires to uniqueness with their kid’s name. You are choosing a unique identifier, after all – you’re actively dedicated to establishing a stand-out naming scheme.
But like people choosing a random vegetables, there are always patterns to even the most determinedly individual act (Carrots! They always pick carrots!). We think we’re original – and we are being original. It’s just that a bit too many people, all somewhat similar to us, all under the same influences, are being original too. People read the latest baby lists and titter at the people calling their kids Chardonnay and Marlis, but the chances are they’re caught up in some other herd of the like-minded, making some other mooing choice. We’re all stuck in some corner of a giant state-machine.
Resigned to our fate, we made our choice, then tried to play a meta game of guessing what trend we belonged to. We had a fairly specific reason for choosing Ada (yes, it’s that Ada). But obviously other pressures came to bear. We like our justification – but we liked our justification for other names too. Ada, though, sounded right. Ohhhhh, those subconscious betrayers of our collective minds.
Knowing we were just herd animals, our guess was that Ada would probably be part of some meta-trend of victorian sounding names – lots of grannies being commemorated, desperate attempts to avoid the hippy Moonunit errors of the recent past, and, perhaps as this article Fiona found supposes, a determination to protect our babies from modern-day woes like (apparently) carjackers. Judging from this year’s stats, it looks like we were right. It’s all strait-faced 19th century monickers these days.
What we didn’t spot was the other trend we clustered with.
Ada’s middle name, much to the horror of our more Moonunit-anoic friends, is “Trouble”.
Since you ask, it’s a family name. Ada’s maternal line has a vibrant genetic heritage of handsome rogues, muscular horsefolk, Western explorers, independent ladies and the odd native american mass-murderer. Trouble was the middle name of one of her finest forebears, and the outer bracketing for many more. I love my in-laws and their stories, and Trouble was a very early suggestion for Ada, and one that kicked around as the placeholder when she was kicking around inside Quinn. It turned into “T.” around the cautiousness of the birth, and popped back into “Trouble” around the time she got a social security number. Trouble she is.
How very original. Except…
Having a strange middle name is getting nigh ubiquitous among our friends newborns. Quinn’s on a baby mailing list where almost all the kids have the template [Normal] [Weird] [FamilyName]. And I see more and more of these idiosyncratic middle names every day. Among the sprog-popping pals of my generation, the determination not to saddle the next generation with flip inventions mixed with the naughty wish to sneak them some little token of our quiet ironic rebelliousness, the often-repeated rationalisation of “Well she/he can always ignore it if it’s a middle name” – it’s all there, on auto-repeat. I’d even go far to say that it’s the shadow-side of this first name victoriana. Very safe name/very crazy name. It’s your choice, little one. You get your taste of free will, just as we realise how much we are just boids in the wind.
(Now where did that come from? I was intending to write about Steve Jobs keynote. Oh, well. Maybe Steve tomorrow.)