The Unseen Here and
Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
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"Thursday's Fare"
FEB. 17, 2000
What's in a name?
A lot I think.
Checked out any dog food manufacturers lately? They're big believers in the value of a name -- and the weirder the better:
Abady, Anmar, Annamet, Arkat, Azmira, Bil-Jac, Canusa, Eukanuba, Forza 10, Hund-N-Flocken, Halshan, IAMS, Innova, Kumpi, Toppet, Sirius, Walthum and Wysong.
Arkat? Eukanuba? Hund-N-Flocken? Kumpi?
Now I'm no genealogist and I must confess Revercomb isn't exactly the regular run at the old mill, but if they're living I want to meet both Mr. Eukanuba and Mr. Hund-N-Flocken. If you can survive a childhood with those names you've got to be something special. Tough enough to start your own dog food company, apparently. And become rather good at it, to boot.
It seems all these guys with the intergalactic monikers have pretty much put Mr. Purina, (The original strange name dog food guy), on his ear. And Mr. Alpo and Mr. Gaines, (as in that burger you tried once as a child), aren't fairing so well either. That's all relative, of course. They still sell about 14 quadrillion cans a year of the stuff. But these days that represents about two-thirds of the market they once had.
There is a wave of specialty manufacturers on the rise within the dog food business and they're starting to do to Messrs Eukanuba and Hund-N-Flocken what they once did to the "Big Dogs" themselves. Except the new boys around the old dog chow bowl are flying right into the face of accepted theory as regards naming their canine cuisine. A difficult pronunciation is no longer a prerequisite. In fact the trend is towards the simple and benign.
Some companies on the rise are: (I kid you not) Dr. Ballard's, Fresh Food Momma, Greta and Dave's Country Pet Food, Ralph's Grocery Company, Solid Gold and Tender Loving Care.
Some have added a large conglomerate or medical connotation : Animal Food Services Inc., National Pet Products, Noble Dog Food, Veterinary Medical Diets, Study Pet Foods, and Balanced Diet.
Will these names help? Probably so. Throw another zinger in the midst and you're likely to get lost. If your name is Smith or Jones or Stanley you might have an opportunity here, but don't forget, your childhood was probably a lot easier than these guys had it.
So what IS in a name?
A lot, I think.
And not just for tough-skinned Dog Chow Manufacturers either. The other day daughter Gussie informed me that she would like to change her name. With a nick name like Gussie, (From Augusta), I had been preparing myself for this, but it wasn't what I had expected :
"Dad, I think I would like to change my name".
"Oh yeah? To what?" I replied.
"I should think I would like to be called "Princess Gussie", she said. "In fact I would like that very much."
"Princess Gussie, eh ... why, Princess Gussie?" I queried.
"Because", she responded, "Then everyone would know I'm a princess."
Notice she did not say that everyone would "think" she was a princess, but "know" she was a princess, which she of course is ... in her mind and more often than not in ours, as well.
We like people to know who and who's we are, and the right name goes a long way toward that. Imagine yourself growing up with some other name. Would your view of yourself or by others be in some way different? Is it possible you could have turned out to be an altogether different person? It somehow seems so, doesn't it?
If my name hadn't started with an "S," I might have wound up on a different kickball team in third grade and missed the opportunity to slide into home plate on the new-to-me asphalt playground surface. Several kids laughed pretty hard, and in spite of the pain, I laughed too, which led to friendships that I know later saved my life on more than one occasion. And in return I may have saved one or two myself. Fate? Destiny? Not sure. Guess I could have been a Sam and wound up right where I am. But then I'd be a Sam and I'd still be somehow different.
It happens rarely but once every decade or so, I meet someone who was just flat out misnamed. Someone who by some misalignment in the cosmos was unduly given the wrong handle by which all others were to grasp them. Not that you can really blame mom and dad. Naming children can get kind of tough, especially if it's the first one and there is no obvious choice. That's when parents either reach for something a bit on the different side or somehow fail to hear the whisper of the Spirit. Kind of strange when a Fred reaches out his hand and says, "Howdy, I'm Roy."
Speaking of Freds, Fred Beuchner once answered the question pretty well.
"It is my name. It is pronounced Beek-Ner. If somebody mispronounces it in some foolish way, I have the feeling that what's foolish is me. If somebody forgets it, I feel that it is I who am forgotten. There is something about it that embarrasses me in just the same way that there's something about me that embarrasses me. I can't imagine myself with any other name. If my name were different, I would be different. When I tell you my name I have given you a hold over me that you didn't have before. If you call it out, I stop, look, and listen whether I want to or not. In the Book of Exodus, God tells Moses that his name is Yahweh, and God hasn't had a peaceful moment since."
He probably hasn't -- making the fact that he still listens and calls us by name an even more miraculous preponderance than it already is.
I am told that Commerce, Ga., was originally Harmony Ga. -- a name changed no doubt to create a better "business environment." "Harmony" to "Commerce"? Ouch.
What's in a name?
Everything.