The Snowflake Chronicles

junior

15 Jalal 164 B.E. – Monday, April 23, 2007

Just give the child any old name
unless, of course, you already have a favorite, but
never call him junior
it may scar the poor little man for life
or worse, it could cause him to
resist going into the family business.

My parents named one of my brothers after our father, but we never called him Junior. That’s because Mom and Dad gave him a different middle name. Frank was his middle name and it came from Grandpa Newland (my mother’s father). We always called him Frank; everybody called him by his middle name. Even at school, the teachers called him Frank. Then he joined the military, specifically the Navy, and they screwed that up. For some weird reason, the Navy insisted that he be called Melvin, his first name, rather than the name he’d always used.

It’s really too bad that when a child is born he or she can’t choose his or her own name. If they could then they wouldn’t be given name like Moon Unit or some other off the wall name that one parent or the other thought was cute. I mean it’s not like I don’t like the names my parents give me, at least they never called me Moon Unit. They named after an aunt on my father’s side and my grandmother on my mother’s side. My first and middle name translate respectively into Snow and Prosperous.

True, if I could have chosen my own name I probably would have chosen Maria, Leah, or something else all together. If I had chosen my own name at birth, then I couldn’t have chosen to use the name Prosperous Snow as an online handle and a pen name on the Las Vegas poetry scene. Therefore, it’s probably just as well that may parents were the ones who named me. Still it would make a good story line for a child to choose his or her own name on the day the child is born.

Why can’t one name a girl Junior? Why is it always boys who are given names that have a Junior added to them? I know that it’s traditional and that for generations we’ve lived in a male dominated society, which seems to think that its OK to give a boy the name of John Jon Jones Junior when his father’s was named John Jon Jones, but it’s not OK to do the same to a girl. Talk about a double standard.

If you look at the whole Junior debate from another angle, Junior could mean

Justice
Unity
Never give up
Individual responsibility
Open mindedness
Respect

which aren’t bad attributes to have associated with one’s name.

Can you imagine what a different world it would be if e.e. cummings had been called e.e. cummings junior. It could have changed the entire American poetry scene. Could he have written the poems he did, in the same style? Would he have written poetry at all? Can a person’s name affect the business he or she chooses? Can it influence whether a person becomes president or poet? Can a name mentally scar a person for life? What’s in a name? (to paraphrase or not I think Shakespeare).

Shakespeare wasn’t named Junior. I’m not an expert, but I can’t think of too many famous or infamous men or women who were called Junior. There are some well know men with numbers after their names, but how many are called Junior. Does this mean that by giving a child the name Junior, the parents are automatically regulating the child to obscurity or worse making some psychiatrist rich? Do parents consider the affect a name will have on the child? Does the name parents give a child really scar it for life?

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