Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Confessions of a teenaged mother (well I used to be anyway)

I can't believe that I totally confessed on a blog that I named my daughter after a heavy metal guitarist. (Keep in mind that if I could do that linking thingy I would have linked you to "Purple is a Fruit right there). What now seems utterly lame, almost disgusting, and completely embarrassing was the most righteous thing to do... when you're 19, barely know where babies come from, and haven't really thought any thing through more than what you are wearing to the local hangout that night.

The reason I mention this is that a lot of the blogs I read have been focusing on baby names and how people come up with them.

My daughter's name is not "Nikki Sixx", but is Nicole (shortened at age 8 to Nikki...and now at 17, to Nik) and would have been Nicholas, if she had been born with the ummmm... appendage (?) that would have required that. I shudder at the callousness with which I bestowed a name upon her. I mean if I had named her "Shemane" after Sophia Loren in "El Cid" would be one thing. There's a certain literary snobbishness with which I could proclaim that when asked, "How did you come up with your kid's names?". But Heavy Metal??? Rock band? Possibly drugged out, tattooed, kind of odd person? Not much pride can be carried while announcing that.

I probably could get by with saying Nicole was a popular name then, and her middle name is that of my great-grandma (and the thousands of other Nicole's born in the year 1990_), Marie. I could, if my daughter didn't insist on proclaiming this little factoid about her mother's silly (not even interesting enough to be labeled wild and crazy) and too carefree youth. She will tell everyone- Is so very proud of it that I suspect it will be the very first thing she writes on her college applications come fall.

So now, now the whole internets knows. And I can lay it to rest. Until the next time someone asks...

My son? He was named after my father, his two uncles and his middle name comes from my husband's father's best friend. Which is a good thing, because if my husband had named him after one of his favorite bands of the time, I would have lots of explaining to do with a boy named Lynard.

2 comments:

Swistle said...

Let's not say "named after," let's say the name was "inspired by." And if we can say it that way, I am willing to confess that one of my children's names was inspired by a TV character, and another was inspired by an actor.

Laura said...

Great plan swistle! It's what I'm going with from now on.