Now that both my parents are gone more than a decade, I guess I can finally say this in public:
I hate my name.
Not that I didn't say it to their faces, and not that anyone could possibly care, but unfortunately, you appear to have stumbled into one of those columnist's prerogative pieces in which the author just goes off on something, the ceaseless demands of semi-legitimate social commentary be damned.
I hear you clicking out. No offense taken. By all means, save yourselves.
So now that it's probably just me and the ghost of Mom and Dad, let me explain that something set me off again the other day, something that just happened to combust an annoyance nearly seven decades in the making, seven decades in which I've had this exact conversation 7,000 times:
Your name?
Gene.
What?
Gene.
Jim?
No, G-E-N-E, Gene.
Sometimes, if the other person is in the professional habit of writing things down, he or she will then write J-E-A-N.
No, G-E-N-E.
The sheer tedium. Decades of tedium.
Thus I've often wondered if Gene Kelly hated his name, or if Gene Wilder hated it, or if Gene Simmons really, really hated it, but I'd wager heavily they were all painfully aware that "Gene" wasn't the worst of it.
That's Eugene.
Scholars insist the name Eugene is from the ancient Greek denoting a nobleman, literally "well born" (and not, conspicuously, "well-named"). The more enlightened students of real life know that Eugene is from the old French and translates approximately to "give me a wedgie," or "hit me in the back of the head with something."
"Eugene" is what I'm required to say, loudly, at the pharmacy, so I can be heard through the COVID screen. I notice the mere sound of it usually spits the other awaiting customers in two — the reflexive eye-rollers and the more disciplined stalwarts who stare balefully ahead, thinking, "poor bastard."
Eugene somehow leaked into the family's nomenclature on my father's side when his parents, James and Dorothy Collier, named the second of their five sons Henry out of respect for a family elder, even though they hated that name (and quite possibly Henry himself) and wanted to call him Gene, which would have been bad enough, but they always called him "Genie," probably because they called his older brother Francis "Francie," and would go on to call their remaining offspring Jimmy, Tommy and Danny. In a nod to formality, my father's full name was constructed as Henry Eugene Collier, and though H.E.C. actually liked the name Gene, he would most readily answer to "Kipper," which is a story too boring even for this column.
Confused? Wait, you're still here?
My parents were no better at naming people than my grandparents. They had three boys and named them as though they were fairly disappointed, gender wise: Gene, Chris and Pat. Remarkably, we were all fairly well adjusted (snort!). When I was growing up, I noticed with a kind of grinding unease that no other kid was named Gene, and worse, that most every other family seemed to have no difficulty issuing standard, utilitarian, worthy-yet-deliciously-inconspicuous monikers. One of my best friends in high school was named Mike and his three brothers were Joe, Jim and John. That's the way you do it. Total wedgies among them: zero.
The other good way is to give your child a beautiful, elegant name that most of your Jimmys and Joes only wish they had. How I longed for one of those. I wish my name was D'Qwell Jackson, like the former Cleveland Browns linebacker. That's a name, D'Qwell Jackson. So is Darius Kasparaitis, formerly of the National Hockey League, where gorgeous names abound. Or Jean-Pierre Rampal, the late renowned flautist.
I would so love to carry that one into the pharmacy.
Name?
"I'm Jean-Pierre Rampal!"
For total clarification, I don't want to sound ungrateful to be named Eugene, and I mean no disrespect to the other Genes who, like my father, actually like that name, nor to the other Chrises or Pats certainly, as Christopher and Patrick are fine names and, relative to Gene, downright outstanding. I met a man once who changed his name to Joybubbles, very seriously and officially. I prefer Gene to Joybubbles, but little else.
Anyway, here's what happened: I was on the phone to order a pizza, like the old people do. The pizza person asked for my phone number, like the takeout restaurant people do, which brings your name to their screen and most will ask, "Gene?" to identify your order and/or to see if you've got pizza points or whatever. I like this feature because it usually keeps me from having to say my name, because they say it first, "Gene?" and I simply respond with a bedraggled "yes."
But this time, when my name came up on the pizza person's screen, the pizza person said, "So, it's ... Jenny?"
Sigh.
"No, Gene."
"What?"
"Gene."
"Jim?"
See? Make it 7,001.
