I met a woman in Iowa who has five brothers and one sister.
Her five brothers are named after Biblical characters whose names begin with J.
James, John, Jesse, Jude, and Joshua.
Her sister’s name is Anne. It was their grandmother’s name.
The woman who I met is named Amanda. When she was born, her parents hadn’t chosen a name, so they asked a random woman in an adjacent hospital room what they had just named their new baby. The new mother said, “Amy,” so Amanda’s parents named her Amy, too.
But because they also thought that Amy sounded like a nickname and was not professional enough for a possible future CEO, they named her Amanda but called her Amy.
Because this all makes sense.
When Amanda/Amy went to kindergarten, there was already an Amy in the class, so the teacher told her that she needed to be called Amanda at school.
I once had three Matthews in my class (not including me) and three Julias in my class, but apparently this teacher couldn’t keep two Amys straight.
So Amanda/Amy was Amy at home and Amanda at school, which led to people occasionally thinking Amy and Amanda were two different people.
Remember: Amanda/Amy’s parents named their sons in a very specific Biblical/alphabetical way. And they named her sister after a deceased grandparent. But Amanda/Amy, who was third born, received a name based upon the name of another random baby who happened to be born around the same time.
Then she got another name, too, because that first name wasn’t good quite enough but also somehow good enough, too.
Parents name babies in the strangest ways sometimes.
My wife almost didn’t have a name. Her parents originally named her Jordan, but the doctor told them that Jordan was a boy’s name, so they abandoned their choice. Then they hemmed and hawed about a new name for so long that the hospital threatened to put “Girl” on the birth certificate.
They finally settled on Elysha, which was the name of my father-in-law’s secretary. Apparently they didn’t love the secretary but liked the name a lot. They wrote all the various spellings of Elysha on the back of an envelope and then chose one.
My wife’s name would be Jordan today if the doctor hadn’t opened his big mouth.
Elysha and I took were slightly more purposeful in the naming of our children.
Our daughter is named Clara Susan. Clara is the character in one of my wife’s favorite children’s books, The Van Gogh Cafe, and Susan was my mother’s name.
Our son is named Charles Wallace, which is also the name of the character from A Wrinkle in Time, a book that my wife and I love. We also love the poet Wallace Stevens, who lived and worked in Hartford, CT, so Wallace was an added bonus.
As for me? I was originally going to be named Bartholomew, but my mother claimed to have “saved me” from my father’s terrible choice by telling the nurses that I was Matthew before he even had a chance to meet me.
Choosing a name without your husband’s consent. Also a strange way to name a baby.
