“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.”
(spoken by Juliet in Romeo & Juliet, Act II, Scene II)
Does a name truly define a person, the essence of a person, or is it, as Juliet suggests, merely a label without meaning? There are perhaps different answers to this question depending on who you are or how you are choosing to look at a particular moniker.
For example, when we found out we were pregnant with each of our girls, my husband and I were more than a little bit excited to begin creating a short list of possible names for each baby. There is not just a little giddiness in the consideration of names when you first learn you are indeed pregnant, and, while I cannot speak to the process other parents go through, I will admit that my husband and I spent plenty of time thumbing through more than one baby names book as we created and revised lists of possible names. Even so, when pressed by either of our teens, I’m not certain we can provide them a satisfactory response to the question regarding how we settled upon either of their names (in fact, they each posed that question this evening during a visit to a friend’s house).
Unlike Shakespeare’s Juliet character, I actually like the idea that names have meanings. That said, we did not necessarily pick names for our girls based on the meaning of the names we chose. Instead, we selected names based on our interest in the name itself and the meaning it carried was a secondary thought. More important to us, again in contrast to Juliet’s pronouncement based on the family names she and Romeo carried, we wanted to include at least a reflection of a name from each of our families. And, so, each of our girls carries a unique first name and a middle name that provides at least a bit of a connection to our families.
Beyond our girls’ names, as a family of writers and neurodivergent minds, names abound in our midst. One of the things I enjoy in conversations with our teenagers are the names they come up with for the various creative projects they work on. They develop names for fictional bands, fictional words, and fictional characters. My older has even developed song titles for the fictional albums her fictional band is working on in at least one version of her stories about that band. And, as good as my 17 year old and I can be with coming up with names for aspects of our stories, there is no doubt in either of our minds that the 15 year old is actually the best among us for creating names—actually inventing new names and assigning names to people and places. So much so that at one point my 17 year old has said she is better than the online fantasy name generators.
But, writing and fictional worlds aside, I think perhaps my most favorite aspect of names in our sweet and awesome family is the names provided to new stuffies. When we visit a new place or head out on a family adventure to an aquarium or nature center, often new stuffies are selected and adopted into our family. Sometimes, we acquire new stuffies simply because we love them, like if I discover a cool dragon stuffie or if my mom, their Nana, comes across a sweet-faced penguin stuffie, or when we needed a weighted stuffie for hugging when the younger is struck with anxiety.
I love the careful consideration my girls bring to the process of naming these stuffed animals they have: Lenny (a stuffed & weighted axolotl), Andromeda (a handmade emotional support dragon—who even has a vest that says so—with moveable limbs), Buckbeak (a dragon puppet I got to rename to Buckbeak because he looked like the hippogriff in the Harry Potter movie), Rapscallion (a stuffed sea pig from a trip to an aquarium in Charlotte when we evacuated Asheville after Helene), Charlie (a stuffed slot my oldest also let me chime in with the name and who helped me drive us back from Myrtle Beach a few years ago), C.C. (a sweet pink stuffed dragon so named because of his resemblance to the lead guitarist of the same name in the hair metal band Poison), Penny (a cute stuffed penguin from Nana), Grayson (an adorable Squishmallow), and Tails, the only stuffie allowed to keep his given name.
There are times my girls question whether it’s “cool” to carry favorite stuffies with them to places. And, honestly, I don’t know how it would feel to not have their sweet favorite stuffies along on our adventures. They travel well, they bring joy, they provide security (for all of us, honestly), and they are at this point members of our family. I cannot imagine an outing without them. And, as Juliet questions, what’s in a name, arguing that its label is not as significant as the person to whom it is attached, I contend that these stuffies are more than the meaning or label assigned to them by others. They are, as I said, like members of our family, and I love that my girls care for them in the same way they care for me and for those they meet along their paths through this life. In fact, I think we would all do better—and feel better—each day if we opted to bring some of our favorite stuffies along with us to navigate the day.