language and determined to crush Omaha 

 traditions assigned new names to their 

 young charges — Grant, Canby, Sheridan, 

 Phillips, Stabler — names of America's 

 great mihtary leaders, the very men who 

 were wiping out the Omahas' Native 

 American kin. It was a cruel process, com- 

 parable to naming a Republican conserva- 

 tive's children Eleanor, JFK, or Jane (as in 

 Fonda) or a left-winger's offspring Rush 

 or Orrin. The elegant Omaha solution is to 

 have two names, an Omaha name for use 

 within Omaha culture and an "Enghsh" 

 name for use within non-Native American 

 contexts. 



In 1967, when my Omaha brother Al- 

 fred Gilpin, Jr., was preparing to give me 

 an Omaha name, he flew in the face of an 

 Omaha taboo and gave me his own name, 

 Tenuga Gahi, or Bull Buffalo Chief. I sat 

 uncomfortably in his yard one September 

 afternoon and hstened to a heated debate 

 as his brothers argued with him that giving 

 away his own name was bad luck. They 

 felt he should follow tradition by present- 

 ing me with a choice of four or nine 

 names, from which I could choose one, 

 thus leaving the name to chance and ab- 

 solving him of any responsibility. (Gilpin 

 persisted, my name is Tenuga Gahi, and 

 Gilpin spent much of the next year in the 

 reservation hospital — for reasons, his 

 family told me, that were unclear to med- 

 ical experts.) 



So I have been spared the usual con- 

 fines of our naming system. The spit- 

 sloshing Roger Lee Welsch may be there 

 on my birth certificate, but in my mind I 

 am also the considerably more splendid 

 Bull Buffalo Chief. 



I have been concerned about names for 

 a long time — and concerned about being 

 concerned, since a preoccupation with 

 names can be a symptom of Huntington's 

 chorea. Woody Guthrie's fatal disease 

 (thus his songs "All they will call them 



will be 'deportees,' " or "What were their 

 names, the men who went down on the 

 good Reuben JamesT and others com- 

 posed in large part of the names of rivers 

 and dams). Thirty years ago, before I was 

 graced by the Omahas, I was discussing 

 the subject of names in a class and ob- 

 served that I admired names of grandeur 

 and poetry, especially when they included 

 hyphens (hyphenation was not so common 

 then). "One of the regrets of my life," I 

 said, "is that I will never have a name with 

 a hyphen in it." 



A young man who had been sitting in 

 the back row all semester without saying a 

 word slowly raised his hand, a look of dis- 

 covery on his face. Surprised, I called on 

 him. "But, uh. Professor Welsch," he said, 

 "doesn't 'son-of-a-bitch' have hyphens in 

 it?" (Actually, it doesn't.) 



Well, what do we do when a shoe 

 doesn't fit? We change it. Aren't our 

 names even more our personal posses- 

 sions than our shoes? We could argue that 

 a name belongs not only to the recipient 

 but also to the donor, but my mother was 

 just as uncomfortable as I was with this 

 name of mine that sounded suitable for 

 that fat baby more than a half century ago. 

 So this year, as a birthday present for my 

 mother and a long overdue relief to my- 

 self, I decided to change my name — just a 

 httle, but enough to make both of us a 

 good deal happier. 



I am now Roger Lee-Flack Welsch. I 

 have my longed-for hyphen. Mom's 

 maiden name (Flack) is preserved in mine, 

 and there's a nice staccato punctuation in 

 the middle of all those ruminating sounds. 

 So what if now, maybe, I will never wear 

 the heavyweight boxing belt? 



(Solution to the riddle in the subtitle: 

 They all have the same middle name.) 



Folklorist R. Lee-Flack Welsch lives on a 

 tree farm in Dannebrog, Nebraska. 



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