What Is In A Name?

There is an old adage "Every Tom, Dick or Harry." What is it about a person's name? So what if someone is called Tom, Dick or Harry? (Although the name Dick may create uproar where guys are concerned.) :-p

But should someone be judged by what he is called? After all, one always say not to judge a book by its cover, then we should not judge a person by his / her name. So what if Grace is not graceful? Or Harry is not hairy? Or May is not born in May? I know of parents (Chinese parents in particular) who gave their kids names incorporating words like "Dragon" (Long), "Strength" (Qiang), "Excellence" (Jie), "Handsome" (Jun), "Beauty" (Mei), etc, hoping the best of the kid. It is actually not wrong to name the kids nice names but the joke will be on the parents if the kids turn out to be totally opposite of their namesake.

My parents picked my name from a combination of two names. One represented the Patron Saint of Music, and the other means "heavenly beauty". In the past, no one believed my name was given by my parents; all thought I named myself after a Shakespeare character. If I had my own way, I would call myself "Jacqueline". Perhaps I will use that for my baptism name. Anyway, my parents combined both names together, hoping I will have both of the qualities, ie musically-inclined and having heavenly beauty. Yet I had neither. :-(

However, my name used to be the butt of jokes in primary school, because it can be mispronounced as something else in English (something that means "ditzy"), and also can be mispronounced as something worse in Hokkien (something that means "death"). During upper secondary Biology lessons, we learnt that a certain part of the human anatomy happened to have the same pronunciation but a different spelling from my name (just a difference of one letter). Needless to say, I was the butt of jokes again. As a result, I used to hate my name. In fact, I still dislike my name. I always wondered why my parents could not give me something nicer sounding, or something that sounds more feminine. The only reason why I am still keeping this name is because not many people have it, and besides, it is the name of one of my favourite Shakespeare characters.

I have met lots of people with unusual names. I like to think that my name is unusual too (as compared to a more popular variation with an additional syllable), because most people will pronounce it as the variation with the additional syllable. I believe those who know me will know only me as having the name. Incidentally, I have only come across one other person with the same name as me so far. That was probably why I used to receive lots of emails from guys throughout junior college and university from the intranet, as firstly, my full name is probably the shortest on the list; secondly, it is unusual, and thirdly, I was probably the only one in the entire school or campus with this name. In fact, most of the guys who used to email me all commented that they find my name unusual and they have not come across anyone else with the same name as me.

I have friends who have unusual names too, like Elkan (probably the only one in Singapore), Angelice (probably could not decide between Alice or Angeline), Damascus (wasn't he a Greek hero?), Janeiro, Galileo (were the parents hoping he would become a famous astronomer with new scientific theories? Perhaps this Galileo will suddenly discover that the Earth may be the Centre of the Universe after all, and the Sun, Moon and Stars all revolve around it. Which reminds me, I have to remember to catch the Mars getting close to Earth tomorrow midnight.), and even Archimedes (Eureka??)!

Recently I also got to know another person with a very unique name, probably the only one of its kind. His name is exactly the same as the current name of one of the offshore islands here, an island used as a British military base during the second World War when the Japanese were about to conquer Singapore. When Singapore was under the Japanese Occupation, this particular island was used as a massacre field, resulting in the former name which means "Island of Death", before it was changed to the current nicer sounding name.

So I guess the lesson is to choose a proper name for your children. People with unusual names get picked on all the time, whether to answer questions, or to fend off irritating people. I am speaking both from personal and friends' experiences. Please do not saddle your children with a name that will cause them to be a sad case for life.