Guest Column: What’s in a name?

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

I heard this ditty so much while I was growing up.

And, name calling does hurt!

Kids used to call me Wiggle Worm. It made me feel so inferior when I heard my peers call me that name. It was years - I mean years - before I could tell anyone my maiden name. Now, I am proud of it because my name is part of me.

I guess most kids do not like their name at some point. Even my granddaughter didn’t like her name. But I can remember the pride when her parents decided to call their long-awaited baby Morgan Alyse.

I never liked my first name either. My parents likely thought it was so noble to call me Marie after one of the Dione quintuplets born in Canada in 1943. Why couldn’t theyhave called me Yvonne or Annette or Cecile or Emelie? Those are all cute names. Then I found out the meaning of my name - Living Fragrance. It gave me something to live up to, that I’d be sweet smelling and not a stink.

In the paper we see names that are strange.

General Petraeus was made fun of and called “betray us” in national papers. Just recently, a woman whose first name was Fairy was written about. What a handle to have to carry around! And what about the person whose last name was Hooker?

I once asked a man whose name was Turnipseed if others made funof his name. He said, “Of course.”

A friend told me her husband was always called Sheep because his name was Lambe. She also told of a boy in her class at school whose last name was Bass.

He was called Flying Fish because of his loping walk.

When our boys were born, I wanted them to have names that were simple and couldn’t be changed. So we named them Danny and Billy (short for William, wouldn’t you know?) But when they got older, they wanted to drop the “y” off the end.

One day we were visiting a cemetery where many of Jerry’s family were buried.

We came across a tombstone of his grandmother Teresa. I knew when I saw it that I’d name my first daughter after her. I didn’t want her to be called Terry or Trish, or any other form of Teresa.

Another grandmother was named Zulima. I thought that was such a lovely name and I wanted to give that name to my next child. I guess it’s good that we stopped with Teresa.

In looking through genealogy, there are many names that are seldom used today - Henry, Rueben, Reding, Augustus, Zachariah, Sibyl, Lucinda, Minerva, Cora, Etta. Mothers often do not give their babies one of the old names.

I guess most of us have not liked our name at some time. But name calling is sort of like bullying. And, yes, it does hurt!

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Editor’s note: Marie Wiggin Putman, and her husband, Jerry, live in Little Flock. A native of Benton County, she writes a monthly column for the Westside Eagle Observer. She and her husband are members of the Pea Ridge Historical Society.