Columns

Photo Credit: Hulton Archive

By Ezra Dyer

Heather and I recently had a baby. More precisely, she had a baby. I was present in the hospital room, but the fact is, eating pizza and drinking beer isn’t the same as giving birth. This is why I refuse to ever use the phrase “we’re pregnant.” We didn’t each have half a baby that somehow merged into a person when we bumped our fists together like the Wonder Twins. Hey, if “we” were pregnant, then someone would’ve thought to offer me some painkillers in the delivery room. I have very strong empathy, you know.

Immediately after the baby’s month-early grand debut, we were faced with a problem: deciding what to call him. We figured we had time to figure that out, but of course, that notion was dashed by our super-baby’s mere eight-month gestation. So they wrote “Baby Boy Dyer” on his hospital wrist bracelet. I kind of liked that one, actually. Baby Boy Dyer sounds like he’d travel the country, hustling chumps at pool halls—always a nice career option to put out there for your newborn. But eventually, he’d need a government name.

It’s not easy to name a person. I can’t even decide what to name a boat. I mean, Dixie Normous is funny now, but will it be funny the 100th time I say it on the radio? (Of course it will.) I did successfully name two dogs. My only misgiving? I didn’t call one of them Critter.

So I’m not an expert in the name game, but I do know that you should resist the urge to focus-group your choices. A name should be the product of a dictatorship, not a democracy. If Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta had consulted her friends and family about what to call herself, it’s highly doubtful that her mom would’ve said, “You know, I think you should go with ‘Lady Gaga.’”

No, you should never tell anyone what you’re thinking of naming your kid. Or if you do, you should give them a decoy name. Like, “If it’s a boy, we’re leaning toward Jambalaya Monstro, but Nerville Underarm Codbody is in the running, too. If it’s a girl, we’re gonna go with Heather Jr., because there just aren’t enough girls named Junior.” Then, whatever you name the kid will be a relief.

There are three main factors to consider when selecting a moniker. The first thing to think about is how other kids will pervert and make fun of it. Second, you should test how it sounds when you’re yelling it in anger—you want something that rolls off the tongue when you’re screaming it across a crowded Chuck E. Cheese. And finally, you need to find a name that hasn’t already been tainted by someone you know. Even if I loved the name Luke, I couldn’t name my kid that, because I knew a Luke in preschool and he always had a snotty nose. I can’t saddle my son with a 90 percent likelihood of being the snotty-nose kid. Because that’s how that works.

Eventually, with Baby Boy Dyer on the verge of going on the birth certificate, we went with Rhys (pronounced “Reese”). It was weird enough to satisfy me while being normal enough to placate everyone else.

Rhys passes the acquaintance connotation test, since neither of us knows anyone with that name. Monosyllabic, it’s easy to yell angrily. However, I’m afraid that it does provide the rotten little children of the future with quite a bit of ammo on the mockery front.

“He’ll be called ‘Rhesus Monkey,’” said my mom, who’s perhaps assigning too much simian expertise to grade-schoolers. But “Reese’s Pieces” is inevitable, and probably so are “greasy monkey” and “Rhys-tard.” Then again, I was called Ez the Lez, and I turned out just fine, after the prison stint and years of therapy.

Trying to predict taunts is a losing battle, anyway. My parents couldn’t have guessed when they named me that a cartoon called The Smurfs would feature a cat named Azrael—and that this would become a taunt to apply to a kid named Ezra. Nor could they have foreseen the arrival of an alt-rock band that would lead to everyone calling their son “Better Than.” They probably could’ve predicted the Ez the Lez thing, though. Point being: If a punk calls him Rhesus Monkey, he’ll just laugh it off while beating the kid up and ostracizing him from the popular clique.

Bottom line? Names are arbitrary. If Rhys hates his, he can always go by his middle name. Nobody makes fun of Jambalaya Monstro.