what should i call ya?...

names are one of my most favorite things in the whole world.

whenever a baby is born the first thing i want to know is what they named the child.

sometimes we have to hold our heads high and wear the name we have been given proudly because it is in honor of someone else.

i am named after my aunt's imaginary friend/play name 'jayna anna'. i love it!

i love carrying my anthony last name proudly, but i will most surely take my husband's last name when i marry. i believe this is a woman's great privelidge and gift to her husband to honor his family in this way.

names stay with us!

they are important in the Bible too. lists after lists of names that have stood the test of time. greats like adam, sara, hannah, jacob, david, mary, matthew, mark, luke, john, paul, and my favorite, samuel.

Proverbs 22:1 says,
A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.

what a precious thing that who we are known as can be eternal. what responsibility to parents! and yet sometimes it doesn't matter what our parents name us, our actions, our surroundings, the people in our lives ultimatley name us. and maybe that is more closely what this verse speaks to.

in Genesis 2:20 it says
So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
in other words, he was not just walking around haphazardly assiging random words to the animals. he was spending time with each one, getting to know them, their behaviors, and then naming them, and still no suitable help mate was found. (but thats another blog.)

my point is names mean something.

and yet, sometimes, the name just doesn't quite fit.

in native american culture the custom is to wait until the child is a few years old to name them in order to see what name is most befitting. you watch as the child develops his or her own personalities or accomplishes a task, and you then name them.

i once heard actor/comedian paul reiser joke that we could not do that in modern american culture. "we would introduce our kids," he quipped, "and say this is my son 'allergic to nuts' and my daughter, 'falls of tricycle'."

and yet we do give each other names.


some of us are just nick namers. we can't help it. its in our blood it seems to assign a name to the ones we love other than the name they have been given.

this too is biblical. jacob to israel. simon to peter. saul to paul.


you know you are loved in my family if we have given you a nickname. matter. manner. katie boo. alley. angle. blade. ya-cub. thunder. robby heart. (im just scrolling through my phone here.)

in our family if you know us three kids well, you might not call us by our given names at all, but rather jay, may and boo. if you know us really well, you might even call us jay jay, merna and boo boo.

my little cousin christopher, who i call chritter, or chrit (he is actually in my phone this way) calls me jay jay, so does his mom and his brother, scott but his other brother, wes, calls me jayna burger. and it all makes my heart smile everytime.

i call my aunt vicki, chrit's mom, kicki, stemming back from childhood when 'v's were too hard to say.

her husband, tom prather, will forever be t.p., because my daddy, tommy anthony, is t.a. and having two tom's (which tom is what my mimi, dad's mom, calls daddy, even though the rest of the world calls him tommy) at thanksgiving has proven to be too much. (confused yet?)

t.p. and kicki's oldest son scott is scotty potty because, sorry, sometimes childhood names just stick, but fortunetely now that he has married molly, sometimes we call them mott and scolly. im not sure which is which actually, is scott, mott or scolly? anyway i guess either is better than scotty potty.

his brother wes has been wesopher to me even before christopher came along. maybe thats why i can't call chrit, christoher. (wait..im just getting started.)

my cousin anthony is a.t. even though he is anthony gene, im not sure where that one came about.

his brother tim is tim-o.

his sister cynthia is c.c.

his mom, paula is aunt polly, ok that one is not too far fetched but..

her sister, my aunt janie, is actually named sara coday hatchett. ???

and her husband, ron, is my uncle big.

and we come by it rightly! (you ready for this?)

my grandfather, mom's dad, whom we all called daddy duke, ( or d. duke or the old bad fox) had eight kids in his family. and no one went by thier given names.

only aunt jeanie whose real name was carmen jean went by anything close.

my grandfather's real name was merl raleigh coday, but they called him duke. except his sister kate called him gick and his sister doe called him bummy. and my grandmother called him dick.( i don't know.)

his daddy, my great, great grandfather, was B. (which stood for Boogerman!)

uncle harold was pete, or wheels, or or woobie, depending on who was talking.

his wife, aunt blanche, was the one who called him pete and he called her trellis.

aunt doe's real name is effie lea.

uncle shag's real name is daniel.

aunt kate's real name is hazel.

and they often called unlce reed, drake.

to this day my mother has no clue what unlce c.'s real name was. she says when she asked her daddy he would just say c. (perhaps, no one knew!)

cousin denny they called hammer or goog, and his brother, phil, was shug.

crazy! and yet, i love it!!

momma says she thinks a lot of those names came from an old book that they read as children.

aren't names a funny, wonderful thing!

i also have a story to tell about a little boy from mississippi who was known as 'squirt', who went off to war as 'al' and came home 'tony'. :)
(but that too is another blog for another day.)

today, i am thinking about how we are known. how a name can shape us. how it can make us smile, take us back, change us, how it can last forever.

i remember a story that we heard as children in this series called the kingdom stories that i can't find online anywhere. it was kind of like a c.s. lewis story (who by the way everyone called jack.) in that it was sort of a parable for the gospel story. it was a story about one that they called scar boy, because of the fires he had endured, and how he ultimatley stood up to the evil one after the savior had changed his name.

"come here, scar boy!" the evil one shouted.
"my name is hero," he said.

and i don't remember any other line.
only that one. and i tear up to this day because sometimes, what our maker will one day call us is the name that matters most.

they say, don't judge a book by its cover, but can you judge a man by how he is called?

be careful! i think sometimes, you can!

poem of the day...

I'm ceded, I ’ve stopped being theirs;
The name they dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church,
Is finished using now,
And they can put it with my dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools
I ’ve finished threading too.

Baptized before without the choice,
But this time consciously, of grace
Unto supremest name,
Called to my full, the crescent dropped,
Existence’s whole arc filled up
With one small diadem.

My second rank, too small the first,
Crowned, crowing on my father’s breast,
A half unconscious queen;
But this time, adequate, erect,
With will to choose or to reject,
And I choose—just a throne.
--e.d.