Under the Wire

What’s in a name?

 

January 25, 2023



Many years ago I attended a small, two room school about four miles from our ranch house. We didn’t have many neighbors so two rooms was enough for the eight or 10 kids spread out over four or five grades. Since I entered on the young end of the age groups I cannot tell you how many girls were in the school. Hadn’t even come close to being interested in them. In fact I was excited that my younger sister was attending an entirely different school miles away! There were, however, six boys. Ironically, three of us were named Gary. What are the odds? In later years, I learned various names are popular for a while before they are replaced with a new “in” name. Our own kids, named David, Stacy, Jeri and Jessica found several others carrying the same name as they went to school. I have heard that some name their children with “success” monikers. Boys named George might be destined for CEO of a large corporation over those named, Joe, for instance. We named ours as we did so we could tell them apart when the principle called about a problem at school.

Are there really good and bad names? My middle name is Arthur. I didn’t really like it growing up. Even though it was a family name, I always thought it sounded kind of stuffy and stuck up. Maybe if I had used it instead of Gary, I would own this newspaper or magazine instead of just writing for it.

I suppose some parents named their kids with success in mind. How else are they going to take care of us when we grow old. Others, on the other hand, seem to have not thought through this when naming the kids, or, they thought at the time. “There, take this name and see how far you can get with it.”

This brings me to my dilemma. A recent email I received announced a meeting of extreme importance to the country’s agriculture industry between two very influential men named Sonny and Zippy. Seriously? Well, I’ll bet they didn’t grow up with half the boys in school carrying the same name. It is just hard for me to get excited about what these two could possibly be talking about that was so important. When does deer season open? Do you know where I can find a trany for my 1969 Ford truck? It would seem their parents were not too concerned about “power names.”

Well, the fact is, “Sonny” is Sonny Perdue, United States Secretary of Agriculture and “Zippy” is American Farm Bureau Federation President. Obviously, a meeting of those two minds had to result in some very heavyweight decisions and observations. Hope their parents lived to see it.

Believe me, I am not making fun of these two heavy weights in United States Farm Policy.

Remember, this is written by a guy named Gary Arthur who is not exactly on a level with either Sonny or Zippy.

After all, what’s in a name? I really can’t decide.

 

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