I get really defensive when my friends name their babies. I have a couple of names I’m really obsessed with, so obsessed actually I won’t even share them with people, just in case I decided to procreate a family band one day and need these names. I have a couple of names I feel quite strongly about – Joni and Jane; Nelson and Otha – that I will happily sound the possessive bugle when someone suggests them for their own child. And there are some I just don’t like, often because they are overdone or I met someone with that name I didn’t like or I just don’t like the sound – Mackenzie, I just don’t like the name Mackenzie for some reason.
It’s actually kind of cool to see what people select for their kids, if they go traditional, trendy, or way-outta-here, or if they use family names and more importantly HOW they end up using the family names. I think it’s clever when people use mother’s maiden names as middle names, or father’s first names as middle names for the oldest boy.
My parents barely fall into the traditional category when it came to naming my brother and I. Our middle names are double, deep-rooted names. I am Alyson Carol Susannah, while my brother is Bradford James Nathaniel.
The formula was this: For our middle names, we have great-grandparent names, depending on gender, one from each side. Carol is my great-grandmother on my father’s side, and as a bonus it is also my mother’s sister’s middle name; Susannah is the name of a great-grandmother on my mother’s side, but my dad is annoyed to report she actually didn’t use an “h” however I quite like my “h” so while it isn’t historically accurate, it stays. As for the first name, we each got our own, brand-spankin’-new name that no one in the family had before.
And I got Alyson. I’ve struggled with you, name. I’ve had mixed feelings about you – from the way you sound, to the way you are spelled, to the meaning behind it. It’s a derivative of Alice, and it means “noble,” and my mother liked the tall “A,” tall “L” and then deep sloping “Y” followed by several standard letters, with an “N” that could have a flippy tail. My dad claims this is the traditional, female, Germanic spelling of the name, and “Allison” is a surname. I went by just “Aly” until college, when I embraced my full name.
I actually almost changed my name when I was 18 to Alyson-Chloe, not just because it sounded like French glamour and champagne kisses, BUT BECAUSE CHLOE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MY NAME.
That’s right. My mother loved the name Chloe, a French-sounding Greek name that means “blooming” and reminds me of some Euro-model with perfectly messy hair, frolicking in a field of daisies.
Chloe as a name also makes me think of my college pal, Chloe Golden, who is probably the smartest woman I have ever met. I don’t really picture her dancing around in a wildflower field, though I’m not saying she shouldn’t, but I do picture her in a navy suit set, slapping some smoking gun evidence down in a tough court case, as she is a lawyer now. I am awful at keeping in touch, but I do think of her and the wisdom she often offered.
For example, she once said to me and another college pal our first year that the only downside to her name was that everyone had a dog named Chloe growing up. Guilty as charged. And do you know why my childhood dog was named Chloe, and why I was named Alyson?
The dog was born first.
