what’s in a name, really?

I was watching The Young And The Restless today (as I always do, thank you, not that I feel I need to justify my unhealthy obsession with poorly written melodramas involving imaginary people that, for that hour, I forget this and think they are real.) One of the big storylines involves the swapping of a baby that was named “Hope” by her birthmother, and “Faith” by the woman who thinks she’s the baby mama. And I got to thinking…optimists seem to love giving their children names that express their sunshiny-warm feelings about the world, with names such as “Hope”, “Faith” “Charity”, “Serenity”, etc., etc.

I wonder why it has never become a trend amongst pessimists and the more Machivellian-minded to name their children after the main tenents of their core values? That could result in some pretty interesting new names in the baby world.I mean, they don’t even need to be viewed in the true context of the meaning of the word. The name could be used almost ironically, or just because the word sounds kinda cool. This should go over really well with celebrities who seem to enjoy naming their children after random names and concepts simply because they think they sound hip. For instance, do you think really Gwynneth Palthrow went with “Apple” because she loves fruit pies? Or that Nicole Ritchie named her son “Sparrow” because she veiws him as a delicate baby bird? Why not “Eagle” then…certainly that name would be more reflective of the type of bird I’d want my son to be if that was my angle. Not some wimpy bird that’s probably easily mauled by cats. Will her next child be named “Swallow”? That would be funny, there’s all sorts of connotations in that one. Or, if she decides to go with a fishy name, will she choose something meek and tiny, like “Guppy”, as opposed to a much more masculine, firmer sounding “Trout” , “Bass”, or even “Grouper”? (Wow, there’s all sorts of name possibilities latent in the fish world. “Cod”, “Flipper”, “Flounder”, “Tetra”, “Trigger”…I could go on for days!)

Or  take Gwen Stefani’s son Zuma…I don’t think she really believes her son will grow up to be some sort of king of the jungle, just as if she bears a sister and decides to call her “Zima”, she wouldn’t be proclaiming her love of a really lame early 90’s malt liquor beverage. It would probably be because the names sound good together. Little Zuma and Zima. What a darling pair! Really, it’s a shame they aren’t twins!

I mean, why don’t we try names like “Greed”? That would be a fine name for a boy. It sounds almost kind of regal, well-bred. We already have people naming their kids “Green”, or “Greenlee” like on All MyChildren.  We could maybe cange the lettering a little. Maybe “Gried”. See! That would be a swell name for a baby brother to Brooke Sheild’s lil’ girl Greir!

Think about it? Was Evel Kenievel sociopathically nefarious? No! Although he may have shown questionable judgement at times, it made a really cool name for a dude who flys his motorcycle over parked cars! And what a flair for marketing he must have had! He must have known that was a great name for an action figure!

Here is a list of more pessamistically or sinfully minded, but could be really hella cool, names I have come up with.

“Malice”, or “Malyce” (Great for families with siblings named “Maddox”, “Madeline”, “Miranda”, “Mathilda”!)

Avarice,  Avareese,  or Av’arice (Could be a delightful baby brother to sister named Ava!)

Deespaire, or D’Spare (Good one for an up-and-coming DJ)

Doom (Think “Doom McKay!”Awesome.)

Apathie (Has a nice French feel, don’tcha think?)

Arrogaunce (He could have been plucked strait from the Shire it sounds so Lord Of The Rings!)

Blame (Great soap name, along the lines of “Blade”, “Flame”) (Ok, I have never heard  of anyone named “Flame”, but hey, that’s kinda cool too)

Mizzerrie (Again, it’s got that French feel, and it wouldn’t surprise me some middle school goth hasn’t beat me to the punch on this one!)

Bitter. (It’s nice and and punk rock, you know. Like, “Bitter Johansson”. “Bitter Blakefield”. “Bitter O’Brien”. “Bitter Jones”. “Bitter Nyugen”. The possibilities are endless)

Madness  (“Madness Mulligan”. Perfect!) Or, simply “Mad”. We already use “Maddie”, so it’s really not a stretch.

Pretentious (“Pretentious Peterson”! Precious!)

Scorne

Skitzo (“Skitzo McGee”! See! Also, good creepy clown name)

Siko  (Long or Short “I”, they both work)

Tarde

Jerk (Good Old “Jerk McJames”! Or “Jerk Jagger”. Or, “Jerk J. Smith”. Very versatile, this one.)

Pryde

Lustie

Really, there are lots of single-syllable words that would make very trendy new names. Words such as “Fury”, “Rage”, “Slay”, “Murk”, “Glut”, “Crave”, “Boor”, “Spaz”, “Scum”, “Sludge”, “Stinge”, “Hanker”, “Ego”, “Death”, “Desire”, “Shallow”, “Raw”, “Rough”,”Trash” and “Fungus”…shouldn’t be just monikers limited to punk rockers, comic books and soap operas, but names for a new, fresh and edgy wave of alterna-babes and social misfits defining and leading a new generation.

Other poly-syllabic words can get a breezy and refreshing twist with plays on spelling and pronunciation. A little tweeking of vocal inflection…and you’ve got a totally cute new baby name! Hey, it worked for Nick Cage’s “Asswipe/Assswipe'” famous character on SNL. That was so freaking funny!

Try taking “Obstinate”. Sounds a little harsh and brutal in its original form. But jazz it up as “Aubstienaat”- it becomes very chic in a Eurotrash/Krautrock kinda way.

“Odious” doesn’t have to mean “stinky”.  He could be part of a new wave of great Greek philosophers!

“Skanty” “Antagony” “Toxic”, “Envy” all become super-cute when you add an “ie”, i.e. “Skantie”, “Toxie”, “Antagonie”, “Envy”! (Again, so francais!)

“Meager” = “Meeger”. “Vulgar” =”Vulgaar” (so Vogue!)

“Insolentia” and “Inimicalle”. Could you dream up names more stylish and wonderfully snobby for your next multiple birth? I think not.

I know you think my thinking is pretty far fetched, but really, we’ve been dabbling in this arena for a long while now, with names like “Vanity”,”Bum”, “Desiree”, “Slut”…oh wait, I guess “slut” isn’t actually a “name”, it’s just the name I use to refer to all the bitches in my life behind their backs.

Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there, something for you to think about!

Kisses and Hisses! XHXHXHXH Mwah!

LD 😀

PS. I know, I was all inconsistent, inaccurate and “wonky” with the haphazard use of parentheses in my diatribe. I must admit, I subscribe to a much more “emotional” use of punctuation, using certain symbols when it “feels” right, versus “intelligent” and “grammatically correct”. Hey, don’t judge me, I’m sure you got the jist of what I was saying.

Mom!

You know, it figures it would have started right at the exact moment I just happened to hit puberty. The universe has its way of jacking with me like that. It gets a real big kick out of fucking with me, likes to tell me I’m an “easy target”. Yeah, I guess I always have been kinda gullible like that.

What the fuck am I talking about, you ask? And what is this nefarious “it” I’m pissing on about,and what does it have to do with that magical, yet subtly perturbing rite of passage that occurs when a girl takes her first wobbly steps down the golden path of her burgeoning womanhood? And, I don’t mean a bat mitzvah-that’s crazy, I’m not even Jewish. You know what I’m talking about.

That “it” is HER. HER!! Yeah, that her, as in the very famous lady in the picture you’re staring right at, who just happens to bear a name that is just too ridiculously similar to mine? You know who I’m talking about. That Miss Queen Of Media herself (no wait, that’s Perez!)…I mean, you know, Queen Of Pop, Queen of the World, Queen Of Sheba, Queen Of Shame, Queen Fucking Bee..whatever. Fucking queen of everything, MADONNA.

Do you have ANY idea what this woman has done to my life? Beginning at about age 13, she latched on to my psyche like a bloodsucking lamprey and has been gnawing her way through the corpulent bowels of my ego ever since. I mean, you remember when Madonna first exploded on the scene, and began herTerminator- esque quest for her Holy Grail of Complete and Total World Domination? Yeah, it was crazy, right? She was every where, you couldn’t escape her- radio, MTV, (or, Friday Night Videos for lame-o’s like me whose parents refused to get cable), the TV, magazines, album covers, posters, cds and cassettes flying all over the place…bad movies…Madonna t-shirts, bandannas, pins, notebooks,mugs, hats, underwear, outerwear, decorative tea cozys,vibrators…you name it, her face, name, ass, something-was on it. (Ok, I’m making up the vibrator part…but you know, now that I think of it…I wonder why there are no Madonna vibrators, dildos, scented massage oils…you think there would be, it’s a natural market…oh, wait,I’m getting a message here… what’s that? An anal plug? Really???? Ok, so, what you’re telling me is there was a limited edition anal plug Madonna was endorsing somewhere around 1987? Huh, interesting. I was not aware of that. Now, that little nugget should come in handy next trivia night!)

The point is that the 80’s were complete Madonna Mania for everyone, everywhere. Now, just stop for a second and put yourself in the shoes of someone whose name is almost just fucking like hers. It was hell, that’s what it was, pure and utter hell. The moment Borderline became a hit and the world fell under that damn strumpet’s spell, was the moment I ceased to be LeDonna…and morphed into LeDonna, The Ultimate Madonna Wannabe.

I didn’t even WANT to be like Madonna, really…ok, you got me. I suppose there was a certain moment when I would look upon her ever-increasing status as an entertainment, fashion and sex icon with perhaps a faint whisper of envy. And not that I particularly ever wanted to be any such thing myself…you know, beautiful, famous, wealthy, desired by the masses…oh, good heavens, no! Not me. No no no no no no.

Around the Sean Penn had dumped Madonna and she started showing up to awards shows with Micheal Jackson, I threw up my hands in defeat. Obviously, she was a creative force to be reckoned with, and much like that blasted ingrown toenail I’d been battling with since my freshman year that refused to heal-she certainly wasn’t about to give up and just go away, and in fact, was growing larger and more noticeable each and every day. I had to accept that Madonna had become a permanent cross-stitch in the fabric of my life.

It probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much that she had started this fashion phenomenon and all the hip girls were dressing like her and looking cute if I hadn’t been so damn fat. Those ripped tees,mesh tanks and black rubber bracelets that looked so cute on all the skinny girls-if you put that same outfit on me, I looked like something fished up out of the Hudson River. Now I’ll just throw on a dead body and maybe one of those plastic 6-pack holders…alright! Let’s go! I’m into the groove!

Everytime my name was mentioned, I would hear someone-somewhere-“Madonna”? As if, where?  Here?! No, dipshit. Madonna is no where in the vicinity, today’s not your lucky day, you didn’t win the lottery or anything. It’s just me. LE-D0N-NA.

When I’m introduced to someone, 9 times out of ten, they will look at me quizically and say,“Madonna?!”, like I’m fucking with them somehow, playing some silly name game. “You’re not Madonna!” is one I get a lot. “I’m NOT?” I’d shoot back in astonishment. “Good God, you’re absolutely right. What was I thinking? There I go again, just assuming the identity of some random celebrity as my own…damn shrink was supposed to adjust my medication. I’m so sorry, this won’t happen again”.

Then I would be forced to clarify. “No, It’s LeDonna, kinda like Madonna, but with an ‘L’ instead of ‘M’…and ‘e’ instead of ‘a’, but it still sounds the same! Oh, and I get a big D, not a little one like hers”.

“So it’s like two names?” gggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I always dreaded the start of each new school year, because it was inevitable at least half the teachers would totally bungle my name, they could never tell if it was “Lee” or “Donna” or “Lee-Donna”,none of which were correct.

“So is your first name ‘Lee’, or is it ‘Donna’, and your middle name’s Lee?”

Yeah, Miss Lady with The Master’s Degree. My first name is Donna, middle name is Le, and my last name is Lee. That makes perfect sense. Donna Le Lee. Donna Le Lee, that’s me! You know, my mother was crazy, and yes, a touch redneck,but she wasn’t so out of her freaking mental galaxy that she would dream up a name as stoopid as “Donna Le Lee”. If she had, I surely would not be standing before right now, because I would have already committed suicide the moment I realized I was actually supposed to spend the rest of my days with a name that sounds like I’m a back-up dancer for Don Ho.

And please, let’s not even get started on my middle name.

“Alright, what’s your middle initial?”

“K.”

“What does that stand for?”

“Kay.”

“No, what does it stand for?”

“Kay.”

“No, I mean, what does the “K” stand for? ”

“Kay!”

“Honey, are you speaking spanish, is that it, are you trying to say ‘what’? I didn’t mean “que” as in “que-so”,I meant, what does the letter ‘K’ stand for in your name?”

“IT STANDS FOR KAY. K-A-Y, MOTHERFUCKING KAY! AS IN MARY ‘KAY’, RHYMES WITH GAY, KAY!!!! Do you understand me now?”

“Oh, yes, I see, Kay! LeDonna Kay Lee. My, isn’t that just the prettiest name!”

You four-eyed fat fuck of a liar. You don’t have to patronize. I know my name sucks.

Actually, I have made peace and grown to like my name. I think it sounds kinda cool, kinda like a movie star. LeDonna Lee. Which is awesome, because one day, I will be. I haven’t given up dreams of entertainment glory. As long as there are webcams and pornos, I still have hope.