What's In A Name?

My sister-in-law, Victoria, writes regarding her 4-year-old daughter, my good pal, Avaroo:

[Ava's Dad expressed some reservations concerning photos of Ava appearing in my blog. God knows why, as only the finest perverts of good breeding read me, but he's a nice guy and I see no reason to upset him. Therefore, here is an illustration of Ava, by MY WIFE. Ava doesn't actually have speech balloons coming out of her head, although that would be really cool.]


Anyway, Victoria says...

I was watching Ava play in her room with her toy horses, and the tan horse wanted the pink-purple-silver horse to come to the pasture. She refused, so the tan horse said, "Why do you have to be so obstinate?"

I asked Ava what that means, and she said, "It means Sparkly refuses to go along with what Brownie wants to do."

I have no idea how she knows that word. I hope she wasn't being obstinate at school.

She's not very creative with the animal names, though.

That's a good meaty word for someone her age, and I'd prefer to think that her vocabulary has been strengthened via spending time with her Uncle Jim, although that's probably not the case (and, considering some of the words she could have picked up from me, probably for the best.) As for coming up with simple names for things, I think that trait runs in her family. I remember when MY WIFE and I had Alyssa, Ava's older sister, doing an overnight at our place. We had cereal in the morning, and the box featured a big blue parrot on the front. The cereal company was having a contest to name this parrot. I asked Alyssa what she thought the parrot's name should be. After giving it careful consideration, she said the parrot's name should be "Bluey". Needless to say, we didn't fill out the entry form. On another occasion, we gifted Alyssa with a green plush stuffed snake, a prize won at a carnival game. No, she didn't name it "Greeny". She named it "Snakey" (which was also the name of my bookie, so it was especially odd for me. However, I digress.)

(By the way, I'm never sure if I spell 'Alyssa' correctly. It has nothing to do with my fondness for her, which is considerable. I'm just crummy when it comes to remembering how to spell names. It would have been easier if her mother named her "Girly". What the heck. Helen Brown's mother did.)

I will never belittle anyone too much for doling out simple names because I'm not entirely innocent of the charge myself. My childhood cat, my favorite of all-time, was named Blackie. This was despite her being a striped tabby.


Whenever MY WIFE sees a picture of Blackie, she laughs and says something to the effect of, "Blackie?!? That cat isn't black!" All I can say, in my defense, is that Blackie sure looked black when she was born, what with all of the amniotic fluid and gunk. What she looked like after I named her was not my fault. I could have changed her name, I suppose, but why confuse a cat unnecessarily?

With less lively things than cats, my choice of names has also been suspect. For instance, among our way-too-many teddy bears, we have two from my childhood, Big Pinky and Little Pinky. As you might imagine, one is bigger than the other and they are both pink. Or they used to be. Now they're a sort of beige with pink highlights. MY WIFE calls them Big Stinky and Little Stinky.


Also from the bears - and, if you're thinking of giving us one as a gift, we have more than enough, so don't - we have this fellow, a gift from my softball teammate, Big Jay Atton.


Big Jay is a faithful reader, and he was especially taken with my story of when MY WIFE dyed our applesauce green. Therefore, the bear's name is, yes, Applesauce.

Further down on the evolutionary scale, we have these two, also gifts from Big Jay.


He gave us these in response to another post about teddy bears, I believe. I asked him what their names were. He said, "Sul and Dog."

(I don't know what it is with Big Jay and teddy bears, but he doesn't question my manhood, so I won't question his, especially since he's 6' 7" and weighs about as much as your average grizzly bear. Here's a picture of him. MY WIFE would have drawn one, like she did with Avaroo, but every time she tried her pencil broke.)


I could make fun of MY WIFE's ability to name things creatively, except she does name things creatively. Some of the names she has bestowed on our bears are as follows:

(Sheesh, I am truly the world's worst photographer. I can't even get good shots of teddy bears. Anyway...)

Ditka (who is, of course, The Coach)




Gilbert (use the French-Canadian pronunciation)




Flaubert




Madame Bovary (his girlfriend)




Brockett (As you can see, he's a chef. If you're familiar with the Mister Rogers cast of characters...)




Lock O'Bear (you have to be familiar with Boston restaurants to get this one.)

and then, of course, there's Bearkind (which name takes a familiarity with professional wrestler Mick Foley to understand. Foley portrayed a character named Mankind, who looked like... well, here are photos of both he and Bearkind.)














Oh! And here's Bi.



(Bi. Get it? He's a polar bear? Well, if you don't get it, I don't want you as a reader anymore. He's Bi-Polar! Hah!)

There are stories to go with every one of our bears (as well as more Avaroo stories, and even more Big Jay Atton stories) but this is easily long enough for me to not feel guilty about quitting now, so that's what I'm going to do.

Soon, with more bearter stuff.