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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!
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As it turned out, I think the four of us probably *could* have been more different if we had really tried hard, but it would have been quite a challenge. ;) Unfortunately this means I don't get along well with everyone.
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(Anonymous) 2011-12-15 06:10 pm (UTC)(link)So true! And we're less than seven years into this adventure, so who knows yet what we're going to end up with! But the four we've got couldn't be more different from each other. Love it.
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So maybe the real answer is that there's a lot of GGmothers out there named Rose. :)
Amusingly, my youngest daughter's middle name is Marie. Not Mari_a_, which is what I would have preferred, but Marie, which my husband preferred. It suits her, though.
I think you're right about names in general, though. I always thought I'd name a daughter Stephanie, but when it came down to actually picking out a name, we knew that wasn't going to work at all. For one thing, both of our daughters are from India, and we wanted names that were evocative of that origin; and secondly (and perhaps more importantly), with a last name of "Smith".... something more unusual was called for. :) But I personally dislike the trendy made up "rhymes with -aden" names which fill my kids' classrooms. I think Gwendolyn is lovely.
(I admit a tiny bit of bias -- it is my mother's name!)
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I wouldn't be surprised at all if the rise of Rose as a middle name recently is due to the little girls having grandmothers or great-grandmothers with that as their first name!
(I admit a tiny bit of bias -- it is my mother's name!)
Interesting! One thing that also ended up winning me over to it was the fact that I knew no one in real life with that name (nor did Joel), and only two fictional characters (from The Importance of Being Earnest and Magic for Marigold (L.M. Montgomery)), which I realized was pretty unusual. So now I know, at least in a roundabout fashion, someone else with the name.
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