Naming the Baby

As if I needed another reminder how life is passing me by, I’m looking at the list of most popular names for newborns. Liam leads followed by Noah for boys and Charlotte and Sophia run one, two for girls. 

Who are these people? I never met a Liam or a Sophia. In my day, Robert and William prevailed with John and James short-listed as well. We also had an assortment of Stanleys, Stevens and Sheldons. Irving and Harry belonged to the generation before as were Hilda, Selma, Thelma and Gussie before that. 

 I thought I was keeping up with the times when I recognized Debbie and Wendy but those have been passé for decades. Names come in on cat’s feet and leave in a fog. Everyone named Sylvia and Shirley along with Betty and Barbara is likely to be on Medicare. That old standard, Mary, which tops the composite list for the past hundred years with 3,670,000 namings, is now in 63rd place and fading while Brooklyn is 27th. Brooklyn is actually a lovely bucolic name; at least it’s better than Bronx. We have five Judys and four Ruths in our circle of friends which relegates them to bright ideas in pre World War II years.

 I note three trends in the naming universe. The first is the urge to break from the flock. All babies are unique but some are more unique than others and deserve a special distinction from the get-go. This tendency however needs to be reconciled with the tradition of honoring an ancestor, if only with the first letter. The second inclination among Americans seems to favor the Anglo-Irish which has bequeathed us not only Liam but landed Aiden, Oliver and Ethan in the top ten. Jewish kids end up with Ryan and Sean, a lifelong incongruity to go along with Lipshitz and Goldfarb. 

My mother and father seemed, even then, to be gripped by this deracination, pulling us away from Eastern Europe roots. My brother was given Arthur Mitchell and I was crowned Norman Phillip. The other thrust I have noted is the turn toward the Old Testament. Noah ranks high and Isaac, Joshua and Jacob are in ascendance along with Gabriel and Benjamin. I wonder if Nebuchadnezzar is waiting in the wings? It is also true among girls with Rachel, Rebecca and Sarah on the rise. On the other hand, Naomi and Esther seem to have had their fifteen minutes. 

 I suddenly realize that the 2012 list is now available. Mason has climbed into first place and shoved Liam down to third position. Among new girls in our midst Emma and Olivia are one and two with Sophia, Ava and Isabella rounding out the first five. Ava Gardner, wherefore art thou? I see that James and Robert are so dated they have made a comeback which proves that fashion is not linear but cyclical. If I live long enough my classmates from P.S. 99 may all return including Ursula and Constance and maybe even Myron and Harvey.

The Name Of The Thing

As kids, weary of Parcheesi or Chinese checkers, my friends and I played a game we called naming things. In turn we listed magazines, soaps, car models etc… I could hold my own in naming names but when it came to identifying the actual thing I ran into trouble.

My friends could look at the sky, listen to the motor and tell if it was a Lockheed, Douglas or Grumman. I’d lookup and admire the clouds. They knew a De Soto from a La Salle from a Chevy…blindfolded. Seriously. They could feel the fins or grille and Bingo.

To me a car was a car. They all had four wheels and a running board and got us from A to B. I had no shame in my ignorance as I remember. To this day I can barely find my car in a parking lot. Thank God for bumper stickers.

However my deficiency hasn’t served me well as a poet. In his Instructions To a Poet, Confucius said to First Know The Names Of Trees.

As a big city street urchin I couldn’t tell a chestnut tree from any other until a chestnut bopped me on the head. I identified them as the goal line which in six months became second base. The most Important feature of a tree was whether it had good elbows for climbing. Once I snapped off a branch and went fishing for a nickel in the sewer.

I wish I were a better noticer early on. It’s taken me a lifetime to say, Joshua tree or Jacaranda, with authority. Now I often stop and stare at trees; the architecture of the branch system, the coloration and shape of the leaves down to their slithering roots.

And while I’m at it I might list bird-watcher as yet another one of those avocations I wish I could claim. In my urban somnolence I didn’t know a sparrow from a swallow. To think of all the orioles and cardinals I consigned to baseball uniforms and left it at that.

Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…..There is no generic bird visual enough to grow wings on the reader the way a hawk can or even a hummingbird. They all deserve a page in the Audubon book even if they never looked as good.

As for poetry I follow the injunction, Write what you know or at least what your imagination can reach. And what I know is that vacancy in my life, the loss that the birders don’t....but I found my voice as an urban poet along the way.

I recall an exchange between Zorba the Greek and the narrator in which Zorba says to the writer, What the hell good are your damn books if they can’t answer to life. Come out with me tonight, we’ll get drunk, dance and sing. The writer says, I write about the agony of not being like you, to which Zorba says I spit on your agony.

I won’t go so far as to call mine an agony; only a regret it has taken me this long to even confront all the doors I haven’t opened, the walls of my limitations.