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a Rose by any other name
I believe I mentioned in an earlier post how Joel and I didn't decide on Gwen's name until nearly an hour after she was born.
It sometimes still catches me by surprise, and I find it strange, that I have a daughter named Gwendolyn. I was one of those kids who picked out the names (first and middle) of all of my future children (both natural born and adopted; I think the total was up to 14 or thereabouts at one point) from fairly early on. The names slowly shifted over time, and many of the names I had picked out as a teen would definitely not make it onto a list of possibilities now. But still, there always was a list, and it was always populated by at least a handful for each gender.
Gwendolyn was never on the list. In fact, I'd never really liked the name, because it's not a "real" name (one of my primary, though amorphous, qualifications for a name for a child of mine). And there was also something else about it -- pretension? I'm not sure, I've never been able to put my finger on it -- that put me off it. When Joel first suggested Gwen, I liked that right away; it's a real name (even though it's most commonly known as a nickname, it's a standalone name in its own right), it has a nice Welsh connection, it's a single syllable (we wanted either a one or three syllable given name to go with the three syllable last name). The only issue with it was that it didn't go well with our choice of middle name, Rose, which we had basically never deviated from; we did briefly consider Maria, after Joel's great-aunt who died in spring, as a middle name (because I wasn't keen on it as a first name; it's a bit too old-fashioned for me, and it's the name of one of Andrea's most important childhood dolls). When Joel put Gwendolyn forward, a few weeks after suggesting Gwen, I'd already had a chance to get used to, and like, the idea of a daughter named Gwen, and I could reconcile myself to the choice of name because it had Gwen as a nickname, and we both agreed that that's what we'd most commonly use. But since Gwen is a real name in and of itself, and we were planning to use that, why not just name her Gwen instead of Gwendolyn? The only thing against this, for me, was that we'd lose Rose as a middle name, but since Grandma Rose's name was already being used by Gwen's cousin Rinnah, who was born in June, I found I minded this less than I thought, especially since we had another relative to honor with the middle name if we went with Maria.
But then Joel mentioned Gwendolyn again a day or two before she was born, and again after she was born, and since we didn't really have any name other than Gwen that we both agreed on, and he'd regularly vetoed one of my favorites (Stella), and he really seemed to like the name, he won me over; I found, as we sat with her during that first hour and realized that we needed to make a decision, that I really liked the idea of her having a name that Joel picked out, and that maybe I didn't dislike Gwendolyn as much as I thought I did.
And since then I'm totally sure we made the right choice. First, I can't really imagine her having any other name. Second, there's a passage in one of the Anne of Green Gables books (Anne of Avonlea, I think), where Anne complains that her name smacks of "bread and butter and chores", and Diana responds that she always thought that the name was "stately, like a queen", but that she'd think any name that Anne was named was beautiful, even Kerenhappuch, because it was associated with her, and Anne comments on how wonderful that sentiment was, to live in such a way that you beautify your name. I keep thinking about that passage when I think of the name Gwendolyn. In the abstract I may not have been a big fan, but in the particular I find I really like the name, because it's the name of my daughter. And third, something I really didn't expect, since she has a name that is not any name that I ever imagined giving one of my kids, I don't have a lifetime's worth of imaginations and fantasies tied to a kid having that name. The realization came over me a few days after she was born that Gwendolyn is a stranger; that she's really her own person, separate from any daydreams and fantasies I may have had; that "Gwendolyn Uckelman" is someone I'll have to get to know. I feel like I'm not quite articulating this well; but the fact that I never dreamed I'd have a daughter named Gwendolyn helped me from the very start see this strangely named being as something distinct and separate and self-contained. I look forward to finding out who she is!
It sometimes still catches me by surprise, and I find it strange, that I have a daughter named Gwendolyn. I was one of those kids who picked out the names (first and middle) of all of my future children (both natural born and adopted; I think the total was up to 14 or thereabouts at one point) from fairly early on. The names slowly shifted over time, and many of the names I had picked out as a teen would definitely not make it onto a list of possibilities now. But still, there always was a list, and it was always populated by at least a handful for each gender.
Gwendolyn was never on the list. In fact, I'd never really liked the name, because it's not a "real" name (one of my primary, though amorphous, qualifications for a name for a child of mine). And there was also something else about it -- pretension? I'm not sure, I've never been able to put my finger on it -- that put me off it. When Joel first suggested Gwen, I liked that right away; it's a real name (even though it's most commonly known as a nickname, it's a standalone name in its own right), it has a nice Welsh connection, it's a single syllable (we wanted either a one or three syllable given name to go with the three syllable last name). The only issue with it was that it didn't go well with our choice of middle name, Rose, which we had basically never deviated from; we did briefly consider Maria, after Joel's great-aunt who died in spring, as a middle name (because I wasn't keen on it as a first name; it's a bit too old-fashioned for me, and it's the name of one of Andrea's most important childhood dolls). When Joel put Gwendolyn forward, a few weeks after suggesting Gwen, I'd already had a chance to get used to, and like, the idea of a daughter named Gwen, and I could reconcile myself to the choice of name because it had Gwen as a nickname, and we both agreed that that's what we'd most commonly use. But since Gwen is a real name in and of itself, and we were planning to use that, why not just name her Gwen instead of Gwendolyn? The only thing against this, for me, was that we'd lose Rose as a middle name, but since Grandma Rose's name was already being used by Gwen's cousin Rinnah, who was born in June, I found I minded this less than I thought, especially since we had another relative to honor with the middle name if we went with Maria.
But then Joel mentioned Gwendolyn again a day or two before she was born, and again after she was born, and since we didn't really have any name other than Gwen that we both agreed on, and he'd regularly vetoed one of my favorites (Stella), and he really seemed to like the name, he won me over; I found, as we sat with her during that first hour and realized that we needed to make a decision, that I really liked the idea of her having a name that Joel picked out, and that maybe I didn't dislike Gwendolyn as much as I thought I did.
And since then I'm totally sure we made the right choice. First, I can't really imagine her having any other name. Second, there's a passage in one of the Anne of Green Gables books (Anne of Avonlea, I think), where Anne complains that her name smacks of "bread and butter and chores", and Diana responds that she always thought that the name was "stately, like a queen", but that she'd think any name that Anne was named was beautiful, even Kerenhappuch, because it was associated with her, and Anne comments on how wonderful that sentiment was, to live in such a way that you beautify your name. I keep thinking about that passage when I think of the name Gwendolyn. In the abstract I may not have been a big fan, but in the particular I find I really like the name, because it's the name of my daughter. And third, something I really didn't expect, since she has a name that is not any name that I ever imagined giving one of my kids, I don't have a lifetime's worth of imaginations and fantasies tied to a kid having that name. The realization came over me a few days after she was born that Gwendolyn is a stranger; that she's really her own person, separate from any daydreams and fantasies I may have had; that "Gwendolyn Uckelman" is someone I'll have to get to know. I feel like I'm not quite articulating this well; but the fact that I never dreamed I'd have a daughter named Gwendolyn helped me from the very start see this strangely named being as something distinct and separate and self-contained. I look forward to finding out who she is!