Naming Little Bean
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
There's a story in Genesis that always fascinated me. It isn't long. It's not real specific. It essentially says that God turned to his latest creation — a man, Homo sapiens, two-legged marvel named Adam and said, 'It's your turn. I made the animals, now you name them." I used to wonder what God was doing while Adam did all that work?
I believe this naming business happened on the sixth day of creation, evidently early in the morning, because Adam had quite a job in store. In my simplistic belief, as I heard this story as a child, I imagined Adam going down the line: zebra, lion, tiger, dog, cat, chicken, monkey. I never ever imagined that being the first man, that he was created with the knowledge of Latin and would name the species officially — he left that to the scholars who would come later. This naming business was Adam's first chance at playing God — where you use a word to call something out (just like God did, if you recall your Sunday school lessons). The next chance that Adam had to use his creative genius was when he had children.
My daughter always has taken seriously this job of naming. Until now, she's only had the chance to name pets and she's very creative. She has a dog named Chase, a black cat named Kohl, some geckos with wonderfully inventive names like Noir. And now my daughter and her husband are about to experience naming a child.
I always knew whatever name she chose would be unusual — my daughter is unusual, I am unusual, so I said to myself, "Brace up." I have discovered in this latest adventure, there is something in this process that makes me yearn for the olden days several generations ago when they named their children after ancestors or straight out of Scripture. And grandmothers had quite a lot to say about the name this child received. I'd like that kind of power, right about now.
Already I've voiced my opinion about names, in what I believe was gentle fashion. "Don't name your child any form of Kayla," I admonished. "There are a slew of them already on the planet." I have four variations on that name in my art class right now. "And don't do some cute spelling either where you stick in a "y" where an "i" would normally be so that your child ends up having to spell their name over and over to people." I know what that is like because my last name was Ehrhardt — I guess Dad couldn't do much about that because it was the family handle." I was always going, "No, E-H-R-H not E-A-R and there's a D-T at the end." I solved that problem when I was 19 and married a man with the last name of Wick! "And don't give your child a name that invites teasing. My Dad had what he considered to be a girl's name, Laurel, and he hated it. He solved the problem by calling himself Larry for a while or just went by his initials, L. J. It was frustrating for him and for us." When I was in California recently, my daughter bought a book with 2,500 names in it so they could begin the naming process while I was there. They really didn't come up with anything they liked. Then she went to a web site where they had more than 5,000 names to choose from. She found the name Mia for a girl — which leaves one wondering if its My-ah or Me-ah. They found the name Lisbet for a girl — which I thought had possibilities. And then they came up with a boy's name that left me gasping. "If you don't like it, Mom," my daughter said with a grin, "You'd better start praying that this is a girl." I did start praying in earnest, but I already knew that I was several months too late in my petition. Now, all we had to do was wait and see.
Unlike the olden days when you discovered the sex of a child on the day it was born, you can now see photographs from the get-go. And I was waiting for the telephone call telling me whether this child was a boy or a girl. I've been calling this potential child, Little Bean since conception — it's what it looked like at first. It's what it was doing inside — jumping around like a Mexican jumping bean. So Little Bean it has been.
On Friday, a rather ordinary day in the country when I was cleaning the B&B, the call came. "Mom, Little Bean is a boy." After we'd laughed and cheered for awhile, I said, "Any other ideas about a name?" "Same name, Mom," my daughter said, "We looked it up on a web site and he'll be the only boy in the United States of America with that name."
