when on the internet, i refer to everyone in my life by a pseudonym. you might think this is for reasons of privacy and security (after all, i have three little kids, and thus should spend vast swaths of my free time worrying about pedophiles and spending money on as-seen-on-tv consumer products designed to protect them, like angel alert beepers, baby leashes, nannycams, and gps implants... at least two of which are good for after-hours adult uses once you've killed a six-pack, making them truly sound investments for the whole family.) but really, it's because it's funny, insulting, and somewhat confusing, especially to stupid people. and nothing makes me smile bigger than fucking with stupid people!
but this pregnancy has made me take a break from many of my habits, like black tar heroin, and this habit is no exception. so. our boys' names are blaidd, leif and ulrik larson. blaidd is an ancient welsh word that means "wolf." (we pronounce it "blade," just because we know it would be futile to try to wrangle anything approximating a correct pronunciation out of "DON'T YOU ASSHOLES SPEAK ENGLISH? PREFERABLY IN MONOSYLLABLES?" americans. in fact, when my friend vetresident asked me how we spelled his name, and i told her, she paused for a second, then asked, "wouldn't that be pronounced "blaedth?" i had to congratulate her on being the first person i have encountered to know that.) being a bit timid on the first child, we gave him a nice, manly, solidly conventional middle name, "alexander," so that if he ever hated his first name, he could go by "alex." (as you may have noticed, a wierd name has not caused that child any problems. he owns it.)
leif is a common name in scandinavia (think leif eriksson) and means "descendant." now, you'd think monosyllabic names would be easy enough, but there are plenty of people out there who stubbornly refuse to accept the fact that it is pronounced "lafe," and insist on stumbling, muttering, saying it reeeeeeeally slowly (no mean feat for a name with a grand total of 3 phonemes to it) and eventually setting on "leaf," even after being corrected multiple times (either politely by his parents, or by the boy himself, who yells "I NOT A WEEF I A BOY I WAFE!" and no, his baby-lisp doesn't help matters any.) on a side note, i didn't realize that having two boys with monosyllabic names with the same vowel sound is a BIG FUCKING MISTAKE, expecially when they're the two boys you spend 90% of your time yelling at. yelling one of their first names results in both of them yelling "what? i didn't do it!" which only pisses me off more. anyway, his middle name is "kormak," the scandinavian spelling of a very common germanic name (kermac, cormac, cermack, and all the logical variations thereof) meaning "raven."
#3 is "ulrik," meaning wolf king. (someday, he will figure out that this technically means he gets to order blaidd around, and hilarity will ensue.) you would not believe how many people, when confronted with the unfamiliar, will forget their 1st-grade phonics lessons and be completely at a loss when trying to pronounce it. i gave up long ago on telling people that it is pronounced as written, because that gets him called everything from "erlick" to "yoolrick." but hey, you know what? if your own name also serves as a stupid-filter, you've got a leg up on the rest of us, who have to wait for a discussion of politics or why he didn't call the next morning to figure out who the stupids are, so more power to him! his middle name is "eri," cognate with the english "ernest," meaning (okay... do i have to tell you? if so, you're officially stupid and probably can't pronounce it, either!) but without the taint of that goofy guy who did all the commercials that snowballed into such classic 80s movies as "ernest goes to camp."
so. we've been trying to name #4 ever since we saw his jumbly bits on the sonogram and had to give up on ever naming a child "ingrid." we whipped out the baby name book, and quickly remembered that we had already used up every good boys' name that we could agree on. so we've been floundering. nodamnsense - well, hell, in the spirit of today's post, i will call him clayton. his name is clayton baron green. his father's name is clayton earl green. when he got married, i told him he needed to have triplets, and name them clayton duke, clayton prince, and clayton drag queen. actually, i wrote that down in the "wish book" one of the bridesmaids put together. so we have a record of the fact that i named his kid! unfortunately, he only had one, and he gave him the name clayton duke. it's not the coolest of my three suggestions, but it is the safest, proving once again that my best friend is a pussy. for further fun, plug the name "clayton green" into any sex offender database, and marvel at the hundreds of results. not only is clayton green a fairly common name, about two-thirds of them are registered sex offenders. it makes for good times every time he fills out an application for a new apartment or job.
anyway. clayton suggested that we name the kid josh (he's nothing if not creative.) i think both of our mothers have suggested it, too. it's been a long time coming... you can't name just one of twins after his daddy, because the other one would just turn out to be an embittered asshole. going back further in time, i had considered naming blaidd "joshua," because it's one of the few common names i've always liked, but i didn't suggest it because i didn't want josh to get a big head having a kid named after him. 8 years and soon-to-be-four dickheads later, i realize that's kind of a lost cause. so, i'm totally ready to name a kid josh (hell, just to completely doom this child, i'd name him joshua clayton larson!) the one person who won't do it? josh. his explanation: "there are too many kids named josh. i hate going to the grocery store and hearing some fat white trash bitch scream "JOSH KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF BEFORE I BEAT YOUR ASS!" at her dirty little runny-nosed mullet-head." fair enough.
we next considered naming the kid after a grandfather, but this quickly degenerated into us disparaging each others' grandfathers' names - jack walter from his, charles fremont from mine. (my other grandfather is named karl. blaidd has already vetoed that, because he insists that is what he's going to name his puppy that i insist he is never going to own.) please note that i was willing to compromise on jack fremont, not because i particularly like jack - on top of this country being at the height of a 3-year "jack" fad, meaning he'd be one of no fewer than 3 jacks in his class every year, there's also "jack-off," "jackass," and "jack shit" to consider - but because it would amuse me to introduce my children as blaidd, leif, ulrik, and jack. josh, however, is not only dead-set against fremont, he is hell-bent on naming this child "jack walter larson iii." i pointed out that just because his cousin is also jack walter larson, that doesn't make this kid "the third," unless he believes, and more importantly, wants everyone else to believe, that some dude in colorado fathered this child. i've never even met his cousin jack, but it might be kind of hard to convince others of this should the pater familias dickheadicus continue to insist on this naming faux pas.
actually, if you want to be really proper about it, that would be "pater familias phalluscaputinis." which leads me neatly to my next topic - latin names. after an exhaustive search of gaelic and scandinavian names (and even root words in those languages to invent our own names) and coming up empty (99.99% of scandinavian names are prohibitively unwieldy in english, and don't even get me STARTED on gaelic; after perusing my gaelic textbooks, i've decided there's a damn good reason that stupid fucking language is dying and i'm not going to shed a tear for it when it goes) we have moved on to latin names. i cornered my husband last night, pointed out that my due date was in 14 weeks, meaning we probably have something like 10-12 weeks before i wake up cussing and deliver this kid on the kitchen table ten minutes later, and we're going to have to write something on the birth certificate.
first, of course, we had to go through the exercise in which we act like assholes and come up with funny names to curse this kid with, like "walking genocide larson," "jesus christlike larson," "tyrant overlord larson," and "sildenefil citrate larson." this spawned the even better "priapus viagra larson," (after you look up priapus, look up the the medical problem that was named after him, "priapism." note that cause of the problem is often the middle name, and the cure for it involves a big needle in your dick, and then you'll fully appreciate the humor.)
now, this led us to, hey, how about latin names? josh has always wanted to name a kid septimus (and i love it too, just not enough to have 3 more kids in order to use it legitimately.) i mentioned that i liked felix, and surprisingly, he said he'd always like it, too. (bonus: i can't think of a single family member who won't hate it!) so last night and today, i've been surfing latin names, and there are enough good ones that i think that's what we're going to wind up doing.
which finally brings me to the point i originally wanted to make when i started this post: latin names are unabashedly superlative. i mean, if you want to give your kid a god complex (hey... "god complex larson." "commie" for short!) name him something like "magnus," which means great. but why be shy, when you could give him an even more magnificent name like "superbus" or "maximus?" or, we could just skip the subtleties altogether and give him a straight-up divine name. the roman gods, and the ones they borrowed from the greeks and egyptians, are pretty awesome - ares, morpheus, osiris, or mithras larson, perhaps?
anyway. whichever one we get the most looks of shock and horror and the most indignant hate-mail about will be the name we go with, so bring it, bitches!
