"If
it’s a boy we should call him Nemo,” my husband suggested, referring to the
book’s renegade submarine Captain.
Keep in mind, this was two years before the Disney film Finding Nemo, and I’d never heard the name before, but I was smitten. Not only did it sound strong and commanding, symbolising what we wanted for our child (he’ll be an explorer, forging his own path!) but I’ve always been a big fan of unusual monikers.
Call
me crazy, but as the only Christina I knew growing up, I revelled in my
uniqueness and never wanted my children to be one of five in their class.
Many
parents see that as a positive thing—they’ll never get teased, they’ll always
fit in—and the protective parent in me totally gets that. But I didn’t want my
child to just fit in. I wanted him to
hold his own and, if he did get bullied (as so many gleefully assured us he
would), learn to stand up for himself and bounce back.
I
was here to teach my child strength and resilience, not make decisions based on
fear and “what ifs”. Besides, we live in the hippie hinterland of a place called Byron Bay where names like
Lotus and Maayan are almost ho-hum.
Cut
to three months later and no one we knew bat an eyelid when we named our
newborn Nemo. No one, that is, except my mum. It wasn’t so much the name that
had her spooked, it was the spelling (it’s ‘omen’ spelt backwards in case you hadn’t
noticed).
We
promptly changed it to ‘Nimo’ and that was that.
Or
so we thought.
Two
years later a famous clownfish swam onto our screens and the name took on a
whole new resonance. Vocal critics suddenly thought it was “cute!”, our toddler
became King of the Kids at kindie and we even appeared in the local newspaper.
Yet
my husband and I were aghast. Not only would people assume we’d named our son
after a Disney character (the horror! the irony!) but Pixar had irrevocably
changing its meaning from commanding to… cute?!
We
didn’t see that one coming.
Naming your child can be fraught
You never know how people are going to react or
what’s around the corner. There’s a girl at Nimo’s school whose parents must
have had the very best intentions when they named her after the mythical
goddess Isis.
If,
like us, you dare to be creative or original, there’s always someone,
somewhere, who’ll scoff and tell you how “cruel” you’re being or how “they’ll
never become Prime Minister with that name, you know!”
And
once upon a time they had a point. Pre-2009, several highly publicised studies
showed that people naturally discriminated in favour of those with common
names, both in the classroom and at work.*1
Well
not any more, folks. A 2016 study found no evidence that employers discriminate
anymore based on names.*2 Thanks to globalisation and the growth of white
collar jobs, there’s been a societal rise in ‘individualism’ which means less
of us are picking one of the Top 20 names for our kids.*3
Where
once we chose names based on popularity, tradition, religion, ideology or
aspirations (names like Joseph Jr, William and Grace), we’re increasingly
choosing quirky names or, heaven forbid, quirky spelling.
And
we can thank the likes of Cameron Diaz, Oprah Winfrey and Barack—who says you
need a traditional name to be Top Dog?—Obama. Interestingly, researchers claim
the US President has created “the Obama effect”, inspiring more parents to give
their babies ethnic-sounding names.*4
The
fact is we all have different motives for naming our kids, and it’s this
difference that makes society so rich. Whatever you decide on, it should be done
with the best intentions, needs to work whether they’re four or 40, and it
wouldn’t hurt to choose a benign middle name should you be thwarted by
Hollywood or foreign terrorists (Nimo has Jacob to fall back on).
While
we chose a more traditional name for our second son, Felix, I wouldn’t change
Nimo’s name if I had my time over, but perhaps we should ask the person who’s
had to live with it for 16 years.
“I
like my name,” Nimo assures me. “People always remember it. Some think it’s
cool and some think it’s weird but I don’t really care what they think. I’m
just glad you didn’t call me something boring. I like being unique.”
Aye
aye Captain!
xo Christina
No comments:
Post a Comment