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On being named
Jun. 26th, 2006 07:13 pmThis was borrowed from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greygirlbeast and sovay.
What does your first name mean?
John means “God is merciful, gracious” in Hebrew. I was named after my paternal grandfather.
What does your middle name mean?
Morris means dark-skinned, swarthy, derived from the Latin word for Moor. Alternatively it may be an Anglicized form of the ancient Irish Ó Muirgheasa, seafarer or sea choice (as in Morrissey).
What does your last name mean?
Benson means, simply, son of Ben or Benjamin.
So what does your name mean when put together?
God-graced, swarthy son of Benjamin: nothing like the name’s bearer. With a handle like that, I should have been in Life of Brian.
What would you have been named if you were the opposite gender?
I think my mother told me that my name would have been Emily had I been female. I was born on the same day (Halloween) in the same hospital as a Karen Benson, so maybe I am the opposite gender, switched at birth…using the word “am” loosely.
Any other name oddities?
In our premarital days, when Anke would drive up from Westerly to see me on weekends, she needed a convenient way to hide the tryst from her parents. So for a couple of years I was Margaret. My high school girlfriend gave me the nickname “J.B.” OK, so those are my initials, but she called me that because I had appeared in two different productions of the Archibald MacLeish play, once as J.B., once as Zuss. My mother called me Pumpkin. Nowadays I’m Wombat, a nickname given to me by a grad student from New Zealand because I don’t like bright lights and I keep my office at work as dark as possible.
I sometimes use the pseudonym Malcolm Morris (Malcolm is my brother’s middle name). Anke and I used the name Anita Morris for a couple of non-fiction pieces we wrote together.
Do you like your name?
It’s OK.
What do you like best about it?
No one ever misspells or mispronounces it.
What do you like least about it?
It’s OMG boring. Anke said she never considered using a hyphenated last name when we got married, because it would have sounded like a character in The Muppets’ Swedish Chef skit: Anke Kriske-Benson.
If you had to change your name (witness protection program, whatever), what would you want it to be?
Don’t ask me. I’m an editor: I have no imagination. I’ll let my writer-friends take a shot at answering this one for me. Maybe I could just be called Morrissey. Oh, damn, that’s already taken. I could be a number: I like numbers.
greygirlbeast and sovay.What does your first name mean?
John means “God is merciful, gracious” in Hebrew. I was named after my paternal grandfather.
What does your middle name mean?
Morris means dark-skinned, swarthy, derived from the Latin word for Moor. Alternatively it may be an Anglicized form of the ancient Irish Ó Muirgheasa, seafarer or sea choice (as in Morrissey).
What does your last name mean?
Benson means, simply, son of Ben or Benjamin.
So what does your name mean when put together?
God-graced, swarthy son of Benjamin: nothing like the name’s bearer. With a handle like that, I should have been in Life of Brian.
What would you have been named if you were the opposite gender?
I think my mother told me that my name would have been Emily had I been female. I was born on the same day (Halloween) in the same hospital as a Karen Benson, so maybe I am the opposite gender, switched at birth…using the word “am” loosely.
Any other name oddities?
In our premarital days, when Anke would drive up from Westerly to see me on weekends, she needed a convenient way to hide the tryst from her parents. So for a couple of years I was Margaret. My high school girlfriend gave me the nickname “J.B.” OK, so those are my initials, but she called me that because I had appeared in two different productions of the Archibald MacLeish play, once as J.B., once as Zuss. My mother called me Pumpkin. Nowadays I’m Wombat, a nickname given to me by a grad student from New Zealand because I don’t like bright lights and I keep my office at work as dark as possible.
I sometimes use the pseudonym Malcolm Morris (Malcolm is my brother’s middle name). Anke and I used the name Anita Morris for a couple of non-fiction pieces we wrote together.
Do you like your name?
It’s OK.
What do you like best about it?
No one ever misspells or mispronounces it.
What do you like least about it?
It’s OMG boring. Anke said she never considered using a hyphenated last name when we got married, because it would have sounded like a character in The Muppets’ Swedish Chef skit: Anke Kriske-Benson.
If you had to change your name (witness protection program, whatever), what would you want it to be?
Don’t ask me. I’m an editor: I have no imagination. I’ll let my writer-friends take a shot at answering this one for me. Maybe I could just be called Morrissey. Oh, damn, that’s already taken. I could be a number: I like numbers.
