I asked if he meant the day, and he said, "No, like my name would be 8:08," which was the time on my car clock.
It got me thinking about how we in the western world came upon our way of naming. Of course, my son's method would've only worked in the last few hundred years because there would have been no way people the way he wants in the ol' sundial days. It would have been two unwieldly, probably, to call someone "the little pie shape that takes up two notches."
My mom's maiden name was Larson, and if you know anything about Scandinavian naming, her name means "Lar's son." The only problem with that is it doesn't really individualize someone because there must be 50 gazillion guys in Sweden named Lars.
What it did do, in the olden days, however, is make you part of a tribe.
This naming tradition is probably a carryover from our pre-literate days when, if you went travelling a fairly far distance and met up with someone you may have to come up with a genealogical story about who you were and what tribe you were from so you could sit down at a flounder feast or some other delicacy of the time and not be dinner.
But it also got me thinking why names have stayed the way they have, trends in naming and why in this digital age, where overpopulation is rampant, why we haven't gone to a more practical or systematic way of naming people.
I have two suspicions. One is ego and parents want to sustain a legacy through their child's name even if every third girl is named Briana. The other is, no matter how literate we may be, that we want the sounds of our chidlren's names to be evocative to the ear since we talk or call our children much more than we write out their names.
It reminds me of the story Pete and Bill about a young Alligator who can't spell his own name William, because it's too long. Pete, William's Ibis friend, suggests William shorten his name to Bill so it's easier to spell. The great mother that she is, Bill's mother rejoices in his discovery.
Which also leads to another thought. How did Bill get to be an established name for William and why do some people prefer to be called William or James instead of Bill or Jim. Stuck with a name, do we have to implant our own ego matching with our personality? I would guess this is the case.
I remember when my own brother was adamant that he wanted to be known as Bill and not Billy. At some point he felt it wasn't grown up enough and wanted some kind of new status for himself and within the family.
Anyway, enough about names for now and since I don't know when I was born, you can just call me John.
