David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published March 19, 2002

Brick -- now THERE'S a
good name for a kid

Those ancient Greeks were on to something. If I could get away with giving my next child one name and one name only, I'd do it in a second. Consider Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Homer -- no one thinks of them as pretentious and self-important. One name was all they needed.

Things are a little different now. Today, the folks who go with single-word names do it to get noticed. Instead of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, we've got Cher, Bono and Sting. They're all fine performers in the own right, but somehow I doubt they'll make the historic impact of this toga-toting triumvirate. You've got to be cool to use a one-word moniker today. You've got to be really cool, and even then most folks will roll their eyes when they first hear it.

I can only imagine the first time Cher, Bono and Sting asked someone to use their single names. They weren't born into one-wordom. Decades ago Paul Hewson walked into a room and for the first time asked people to call him Bono. Now that takes guts.

"From now on, call me Bono."

"Bono? What?"

"Bono's my name now."

"What are you babbling about? It's not even a word. Your name is Paul. You can't just change names. Now shut up and put on your glasses."

Cher was actually born Cher, well Cherilyn anyway. I don't know what her parents were thinking, either. She dropped her last name, Sarkissian, for show-biz reasons, which was probably a good move. It's hard to pronounce and hard to spell. Sarkissian would look odd on a marquee. Also, she didn't have to make as an abrupt name change like our good friend Gordon Sumner.

"I'm Sting."

"Hmmmm?"

"Call me Sting."

"Gordon, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Have you been stung? Get some ice on it and quit your bellyaching."

"No, no, no. I'm Sting now. I want you to call me Sting."

"Fine, fine, whatever. Sting, is it? You've been hanging out with Paul again, haven't you?"

Once their careers took off, they were able to maintain the one-word names.

It's a good thing, too. I don't know if I'd want my child's English teacher to be named Sting. Would the kids in his class have to call him Mr. Sting?

Learning would come to a grinding halt. It would be tough to ask Mr. Sting about The Canterbury Tales with a straight face. He's a bright fellow, but "Sting" just wouldn't work in a classroom.

I don't know if the hospital would let you bestow one name only. The nurse in charge would probably slap you silly for even trying it. Sure, it would be interesting, but if you're going to saddle a child with such a thing, you'd better sign up him or her for karate lessons the day you leave the maternity ward. A soft kid with a one-word name would get beaten up on an hourly basis.

Nonetheless, I find myself thinking about cool one-word names for Baby No. 2, which, in case you were wondering, has not been conceived. It would have to be something tough-sounding, like Max or Dirk. A kid named Brick could take a punch, I'll bet. I have a friend who was half-joking last summer that he'd like to name a son Lefty. How great would that be? If the kid turns out to be left-handed, well, that would be fine, but consider how cool it would be to have a right-handed son named Lefty. It would be a great sports name.

Or it would be fabulous if the kid wanted to grow up to be a mobster. No last name is needed. Just call him Lefty. No one screws with Lefty. If you teach your children only two things, teach them this: Never play pool with a guy named after a state, and don't mess with a Lefty.

I wonder how Socrates' parents came up with his name. Was there a baby name book in ancient Greece? Did they pull it out of thin air, or were Socrateses a dime a dozen back then? There weren't as many people in the world in Socrates' day as there are now, so it might have been pretty unlikely that Socrates the philosopher would meet Socrates the bricklayer.

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. You know, for a bricklayer, that guy was pretty sharp.

· · ·
David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.