The Repercussions of Naming Your Child Jonah
My daughter Antonia likes to tell friends, family and perfect strangers how she ended up with her name. About how when I was in college I was constantly told by my mother to pray to St. Anthony because he was the saint that watched over losers. Well… people who LOSE things, anyway. I was most definitely qualified as a loser in the early ’90s. I lost my keys every third Friday or so. And my driver’s license. I was endlessly misplacing my soils textbooks, my very anemic notes, my oversized backpacks, class schedules, nail clippers, hair scrunchies, etc. It affected me in more ways than one. For example, I was always wandering around lost in dreams, playing slot machines and waiting for someone to come find me and take me to the airport.
And then one sadder-than-usual day… I lost my checkbook. The checkbook that had my innumerable high-interest-rate credit cards tucked away inside, 20 bucks in tips… not to mention THE CHECKBOOK with ALLLL that student loan money I had just deposited into it. I told myself, “Self. This is it. You are going to be seriously poor now, all because you can’t pull your brain cells together like a normal, functioning adult that accounts for their material belongings regularly.”
And then I finally did what my mother (and aunts and subconscious) had told me to do so many times before. I prayed to this St. Anthony dude, in a mocking, half-hearted kind of way. I remember laughing as I said out loud, “All right! If you can find it in you to help me with this checkbook fiasco, I will be SO UTTERLY impressed that I will name my first child after you!”
BEHOLD.
Almost immediately, I got a phone call from someone who said, “Hey, is this Catherine? I just found your checkbook and thought I’d dial the phone number printed here and let you know that I’m on my way to your address, that’s also printed here, to return it to you!!” Upon hearing this, I had the intestinal butterflies of someone who’d just accidentally bumped into their soulmate at the mall. Mr. Anonymous sounded just as thrilled… in a good Samaritan kind of way.
About five minutes later, he was knocking at my door to return the goods. Everything intact, not even a dollar of my tips missing. He wanted no reward, no cold drink, no French kiss. Returning it to its rightful owner was reward enough, he said.
So, three years later, true to my word, I was holding this 7 lb. 13 oz screaming, squirming ball of miraculousness who would forevermore be known as “Antonia.” Maybe Toni. (Anthony just seemed a little weird for a girl.) And, while I’m not really into the whole saint-believing thing, I still consider St. Anthony to be a secret pal, kind of like Santa Claus but without the commercialism.
Great story, right? Toni thinks so, anyway.
THEN there’s my almost-seven-year-old son. Jonah. He’s been told a million and one times that he was named after the little boy in Sleepless in Seattle because, at the time, his father was in love with everything Tom Hanks. And, besides, we didn’t know any Jonahs. It was simple. And original. And better than the SECOND name his father was leaning towards which was Walter. As in Payton. As in NOT.
Yet Jonah has chosen to believe all the compelling strangers around him that counter he was ACTUALLY named for a prophet that refused to save the sin city of Nineveh and was henceforth swallowed by a large whale to contemplate the err in his ways. Okay, maybe he doesn’t say it quite like that. Nonetheless, he’s in love with the idea that he could hang out in the innards of a whale with nothing to keep him company but his hobo pack, waiting for the whale to sneeze him out… because it IS kind of Pinnochio-ish. I’ve decided to let it go. The real story just doesn’t put out NEAR the flamboyant artwork.
I’ll deal with the origins of Emma and Kyra’s names later. At three and four, respectively, they currently could care less what sitcom character/Biblical phenom/estranged aunt they were named after. I figure I’ve got a few years left to think up something really epic.
So what’s the story behind your childrens’ names?
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That picture is CLASSIC. The story of Jonah is what brought my husband and I together. Another Neneveh story for another day. :-)
As far as my daughter Hadley, no real story there. Loved the name and named it to her.
Oh, and as for my son Bode, we were pregnant during the Olympics and saw Bode Miller all over the press (and bombing out). Hubby suggested and I loved it.
I just hope our Bode doesn’t have the same reputation. :-)
Names are so hard, esp. with so many boys names changing to girls names in less than a generation. I once worked with a man my dad’s age named Whitney. And if you think about it, one of Scarlett’s suitors in Gone with the Wind was Ashley! My how times have changed!
I just hope my kids grow to simply think of their names as theirs, first and foremost.
And if there are fun stories about whales, well, why not? :D
Picking names for children can really make or break a marriage. Some of our most heated conversations were over what name our progeny would take for all eternity (or at least until they decide they can’t live with it any longer and change it themselves – oh the horror!).
Every name first had to pass the “will this get them picked on for the first 8 years of school” test. Then it had to sound right and have go well with a middle name… if only our kids knew how hard we worked to give them the “perfect” name.
My husband was studying Greek at the time Zoe was born, which means “life.” It was and is fitting.
Elijah is a Hebrew word that means “the Lord is My God” and something we hope he will believe as he grows. Also cool that he was a Biblical figure who never died. The Bible says God just “took him.”
That is the funniest story!! I love hearing the reasons behind kids’ names!
We named Claire, Claire, because that was the ONLY name we both liked that we could both spell.
My hubby made me us the Social Security Database to look for names that weren’t uber-popular.
If you’ve ready my blog, you would probably assume that I named her after a character on LOST, but it’s not true! Honest! No, for real!
Speaking of which, one of my friends told me that she subbed in a preschool class the other day that had a Jack, Sawyer, Claire and Ben. I’d bet their names had *nothing* to do with LOST, either!! ;)
Love the pic, and the story of Toni’s name!
We made up my daughter’s name, making her highly google-able. My son’s is also an obscure name, coming from my husband’s extensive Irish family tree.
Alas, no whales or other behemonths in our stories.
Glad you got your checkbook back!
We didn’t name any of children right away, it took us a couple of week with each one. Then we started with the middle names and worked outward. All three ended up with fairly unisex names, an aspect I love. We ended up with a boy ~Loren, a girl ~Cassidy Jane and a boy ~Devon. I especially wanted our daughter to have a butt kicking name so I insisted the Jane be tacked on for good measure.
In each case our families got completely irritated that we waited so long to commit to names.
http://www.caloden.com
I am infatuated with names. Names mean so much to me. In my fifth month of pregnancy, hubby and I decided to name our daughter Christine. Because I had a unique name, I wanted my daughter to have a common name. We told everyone her name was Christine. We recieved gifts with the name Christine. My belly’s nickname was Chrissy. Do you see where I am going? One week prior to induction, I asked hubby, “Do you still want to name her Christine?” I scammered for a new name. We only had a few days until she was born. I said, “Catalina.” He said, “I like it.”