Opinion On Christmas Eve two years ago I was reading my way through a stack of baby-name books. I had gone from Biblical to New Age, but nothing seemed to fit the overdue lump inside me. At the bottom of the pile I found What NOT to Name the Baby. The authors, Roger Price and Leonard Stern, contend that names — not hered- ity, environment, television or lack of fibre — are responsible for our inept personalities. Until a baby is given a name, say the authors, it continues to be a dampish noisy lump with little personality and, to the objective observer, not even any sex. Their theory is that once the baby has a name, society begins to treat it as if it had the type of personality the name implies, and the child grows up to fit the name. “Take myself,”’ says Price. “As a result of being named ROGER I wore glasses when I was nine, which made me look studious, and I made the best grades in school.” If he*d been named NICK, he maintains, he would have had 20/20 vision and instead of studying would have been playing marbles for keeps in the school basement. In fiction, where every character (like every person) is the embodiment of a complicated philosophical way of looking at the world, a name, I knew, could be a strong clue to a character’s personality. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it,” wrote CS. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. On the other hand, Scarlett O’Hara was undeserving of the name Margaret Mitchell gave her in an early draft of Gone with the Wind. Mitchell had named her heroine PANSY. ““A name is a kind of face,” wrote Thomas Fuller, summing up the way most of us think, not only about our own names, but about those of other people. We feel as possessive of our names as we do of our reflections in a mirror. For instance, I once introduced a former husband by my present husband’s name. To hide his hurt feelings he retaliated with that over-used line from Auntie Mamie, “You can call me anything, just don’t call me late for dinner.” It was an innocent mistake, I assured him. I had so many names to keep track of in my life! But change my name by so much as a single letter, and my character — my way of looking at the world — changes too. Who but a physically careless, “insensitive boor would be guilty of addressing me What's not ina name as MusgrOve? My sumame, MusgrAve, has always been the strongest clue to who I am (reverse it and you get “Grave-muse’’). Over the years, though, I'd grown used to my given name. And since having tead a British survey where SUSAN was voted the name with the most sex appeal, I’ve actually been able to live with it. But when I looked up my name in What NOT to Name the Baby, the authors gave it a different interpretation. “SUSAN organizes things and bakes cookies.” I thought of other writers I knew and found more exceptions. “RUDY is fat, wears a pinky ring and uses terrible language,” didn’t, for a minute describe the writer Rudy Weibe who is thin and eschews jewelry. “JUNE dresses to call attention to her shoul- ders,’ was not June Callwood. “You will at times see flagrant exceptions to the conclusions expressed here,” say Puce and Stem. “These exceptions merely prove the validity of our theory.” What NOT to name the baby became an awesome responsibility. Should I risk naming my son GAYLORD and trust that he’s the not-so- flagrant exception and doesn’t grow up to be “a bridal consultant’? By calling my daughter EUPHEMIA am I insuring she’ll become “a homely little kid, who bites?” A week after my dampish lump was barking my name over the Fisher-Price monitor, she was still nameless. In desperation we settled on SOPHIE, because my eldest daughter said she seemed like a SOPHIE and because the name wasn’t popular enough to be listed in What Not to Name the Baby. On January 4th, SOPHIE (which, in classical baby-name books, means “wisdom”’) will be two. Just as a ROSE is not always a ROSE, SOPHIE is more of a TOBY, According to Price and Stern’s theory, she will change. Chances are she'll grow up to be the kind of person her name sounds like she ought to be. Then again there’s always a possibility that, like another couple on a Christmas Eve two thousand years ago, we chose the wrong name. Away in a manger, MARY and JOSEPH called their new- bom baby JEHOSHEA. JEHOSHEA, according to Rabbi Saul Kraft, was an immigrant name, which is why it was changed to JESUS. a URTON’S GARAGE LTD. TIRE LAND SIDNEY Corner of McTavish & E. Saanich Rd. January 1 — 2:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CALL 656-3777 HAMPER FUND TheReview Monday, December 24, 1990 — A22 GURTON’S STAFF WISHES YOU A Merry Christmas - “Serving the Peninsula <=) gy : 7 \ Mrs. E. Ridgeway 4} y, a Total for the week ending Thursday, December 20, 1990 is $32,140.17. PPP TIT _ x SUPPER « PARTY FAVOURS « BUBBLES ‘Dancing till 3:00 A.M. $4900 :,. .t0 your favorite music 1 2 per person’ YAO ————— a =e 3 hehehehehe 5 : WOW "i yd ROOMS $25 FOR THIS NIGHT oS. *7 ee | ——— LUKETS OR RESERVATIONS 1656-1176 | @ r. z Travelodge Ss poor ne < CHRISTMAS COUNTERATTACK A>m< SmZ