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My given name is Laurie (rhymes with "sorry", technically) to most
people, much to the horror of the priest who baptized me and my third
grade teacher Sister Patricia because although I was not named after a
Partridge Family character it's still not a saint's name so basically
to them I was Laurence. It's "Yo" and "hey" and increasingly, horribly,
"Ma'am" to many more. Some people in a far off land I occasionally
inhabit call me "Professor," that is when they're not calling me "Yo."
Go ahead. Laugh. I do.
And some people call me lauriewrites. It's like I told them to or something.
Speaking more personally, my name was switched up to Lou Ann by my
grandmother who was the only person ever allowed to call me that or who would likely have a reason to. I was called "baby" almost exclusively for years by a man I'd kind of still like to kick in the knees on the rare occasion that I wear closed toe shoes, to the point that I rarely remember him saying my name. My cousin sticks with my name but called me LaLa for years because that was all she could say when we started out talking and it still comes out sometimes as a joke or an aside. I am ever Laurie Anne to my uncles and aunts and LDub - my personal current favorite - to a few of my closest colleague friends at work, who all have shortened versions of their names from me as well.
What do the people who love you call you? What do you call the people you love, and I'm only talking about the nice things, not the mad things.
Keep that in the back of your mind, while I spin out and remind you that Michael Jackson died this summer. And although it was and remains a weird spectacle of family strife and drugs and nannies and Jermaine hosting benefits with Shawn King, wife of Larry, I still only care because in addition to the fact that I was a 70s and 80s kid and Michael Jackson died, as in permanently, I was and remain straight up fascinated that his youngest child, Prince Michael II, is called Blanket, both allegedly within his family and in the news media.
Blanket. Prince Michael Jackson II aka Blanket Jackson, so named because of the blanket his father used to put over his head when he had to go out in public. (And yes, weird things frequently fascinate me.)
At first I thought Michael was turning the media idiocy on its head and making friends with the enemy, as in "Make me feel like I have to hide my kid under a blanket and I'll show you. That's what I'll call him. I'm owning this one, bitches."
But maybe not, because I read on several marginally reliable sites (WikiHow? What?) that Michael allegedly said this: "It's an expression I use with my family and my employees. I say, 'You should blanket me or you should blanket her', meaning like a blanket is a blessing. It's a way of showing love and caring."
Which is probably the truth, although I'm not sure. Doesn't that sound like it would be the truth, though? Because look who we're talking about here. And whether it's true or not, what is true is that if Blanket's family wanted to call him Blanket, that was kind of up to them.
Names are important. Names matter, and I am unusually interested in
them. Your name is how the world knows you and to some extent it's how you have to know yourself so you can do important things like endorse checks and get driver's licenses and fly on planes and pick up carryout orders. (Although for that? That last thing? Making up names is a small creative exercise if you're bored.)
Nicknames are important too - terms of endearment, shortenings of given names or inclusions of middle names in the interest of familiarity, affection, or maybe just laziness if someone's name issuper long and a couple of initials will do the trick just fine.
Although Blanket sounds as really, really random as I really believe it is, things that are not actually names do indeed become people's names. People get called HalfPint and Homeslice and Scooter and Puddin and Tootie and Pookie (Seriously. The last two have turned into everyday names for cousins of mine who were never called Mary Jo or Dorothea unless they were in some serious trouble, I'd bet.)
My
