Science Lite 



The Hyphenated American 



What did Catherine the Great, Attila the Hun, andJabba the Hutt have in common? 



by Roger L. Welsch 



It was a remarkable moment in my life: 

 (1) my mother agreed with me, and (2) she 

 agreed with me that my name — Roger Lee 

 Welsch — was dumb. "Roger" has no 

 meaning in our family (or in all history, so 

 far as I can determine), and neither does 

 "Lee." Heaven knows, the combination 

 was not chosen for euphony, since it 

 sounds like the sloshing of a bucket of 

 slops. "Yes, Roger" my mother confessed 

 tearfully. "I wish I had given you a name 

 Like your cousin RoseMary's." 



"Who was RoseMary named after?" I 

 asked. 



"Well, no one, but her middle name is 

 her mother's maiden name, Welsch." 



Naming a human being is a ferocious 

 responsibility and should be done with at 

 least as much consideration as naming a 

 pickup truck. My children's names are 

 heavy with family and cultural history. My 

 youngest daughter is Antonia (after two 

 ancestors and Gather's fictional peasant 

 heroine) Emily (after two other ancestors) 

 Celestine (after a grandmother) Welsch 

 (representing two millennia of endless 

 German migration). 



These days people want their children 

 to have cuddly names, apparendy content 

 that they will never amount to much. 

 Some people — a lot of people — work hard 

 at finding names for their children that are 

 without substance, evocation, or poetry. 

 One of my own grandchildren has a set of 

 labels so hopelessly trendy (and which 

 will be as silly as a Nehru jacket by the 

 time the kid graduates irom high school) 

 that I cannot bring myself to refer to him 

 as anything but C. B. 



Of course, one can go too far, loading a 

 kid down with a meaning-drenched name. 

 I recently met a woman, for example, who 

 proudly told me she had named her son 

 after her favorite place in the world. Rocky 

 Mountain National Park. "You named him 

 ■Rocky?' " I asked. 



"No," she smiled. " 'Rocky Mountain 

 National Park.' " 



So what are these kids going to do when 

 they are older and embarrassed by their 

 names? Until recently a woman cursed 

 with a goofy last name could hope to 

 marry a man with a heroic family name, 

 take it as her own, and cut her losses. I 

 think of the child whose mother was in the 

 hospital bed next to my wife's at the birth 

 of our son Chris (for his grandfather) Ed- 

 ward (for his uncle, on whose birthday he 

 was bom). This lady named her daughter 

 Michelle Renee. Michelle Renee Bier- 

 schluckenhausen. I am sure that Michelle 

 Renee, and probably her mother, lived 

 their lives anticipating a minister saying, 

 "I now pronounce you husband and wife. 

 You may kiss the bride, Mr. DuPont." 



She probably married a guy named 

 Lukosolowicz, because that's the way the 

 gods work. Or she got liberated and hy- 

 phenated: Michelle Renee Bierschlucken- 

 hausen-Lukosolowicz. Don't get me 

 wrong: I have trouble only with the 

 Michelle Renee part. Bierschlucken- 

 hausen-Lukosolowicz rolls off this Ger- 

 man tongue like a poem by Goethe. 



My father is Christian Welsch. That's it. 

 No middle name. He says his family was 

 too busy having other children and work- 

 ing like slaves to think up middle names. 

 And there's Marky Mark (of padded un- 

 derwear fame) and Dougie Doug (televi- 

 sion "personality"). I think of them as 

 nominally challenged. Not to mention 

 United Nations Secretary General Boutros 

 Boutros-Ghali. Or Cher and Madonna, 

 who have not exacdy distinguished the 

 mononominal system. 



The customary Nordic system was to 

 base the second name on the first name of 

 the father or mother — so you got names 

 like Eric Ericson and Sigrid Egilsdottir. 

 This procedure makes sense to me be- 

 cause, even though it can raise all sorts of 



hell with a telephone book, it provides tra- 

 dition-rich names and plenty of conversa- 

 tional material. 



As a fat old man, I have great fondness 

 for George Foreman, another fat old man 

 and — not incidentally — a formidable 

 prizefighter. It takes ego to step into a box- 

 ing ring, which probably explains why 

 George named all of his sons George. 

 George Foreman, George Foreman, 

 George Foreman, and George Foreman. 

 Consistency like that may result from the 

 fuss Cassius Clay raised when he changed 

 his name to Muhammad Ali, annoying the 

 mainstream not only because it conftised 

 heavyweight boxing records but also be- 

 cause this guy sounds like he's from Qatar 

 or something. The world of boxing, of 

 which I have been a modest part myself 

 now and then, is not noted for its social 

 progressiveness. 



As usual, my Omaha Indian friends 

 have, over the years, arrived at a resolution 

 to the problems of naming. Traditionally, 

 the Omahas bestowed tribal names that 

 carried great meaning, but a person's name 

 could be changed now and then to suit im- 

 portant developments in his or her life. 

 Moreover, new names were occasionally 

 brought into the tribal inventory. When the 

 French began to ply the Missouri and 

 make themselves comfortable among the 

 Omaha, French names found their way 

 into the tribe — LaFlesche, Saunsoci, 

 Fontenelle. (Sometimes even those names 

 seem eerily appropriate: Frances 

 LaFlesche, for example, an ethnologist of 

 Omaha and Ponca parentage, had as her 

 mentor the non-Indian ethnologist Alice 

 Fletcher. La fleche is French for "the 

 arrow," while fletcher is English for 

 "arrow maker.") 



Things got nasty for the Omaha when 

 the next wave of non-Indians — missionar- 

 ies and soldiers — came across the Plains. 

 Missionaries unwilling to learn the Omaha 



24 Natural History 3/94 



