Winning Names

Larry and I had a pretty easy time naming our daughter way back when.

Some history: Emily  wasn't on a most popular names list when she was born in the mid-80s. By 1990 the name ranked #7 . . . five years later # 3 . . . and by the start of the new millennium Emily topped the official list of Most Popular Baby Girl Names.

Who knew? Certainly not the two of us.  We just loved the name. And I soon came to love the shortened version even more. (Note: Parents-to-be  who are considering baby names need to weigh in on shortened versions too!)

Some backstory: I taught, teach, and will no doubt continue to teach writing for some time. The name Emily  connected my English-teacher brain to the literary Belle of Amherst – Ms. Dickinson. A fortunate synapse for sure!  Had I only been able to connect  the name to Emily Post,  why, our Emily might have been named Mallory - after the likeable daughter in the Family Ties sitcom. (You're dating yourself if you knew that – just saying!). But Mallory was nowhere near a close second!  If this Name Game was a horse race, Emily crossed the finish line way before Mallory got  very far out of the gate.

More backstory: My husband’s brother was, is, and will no doubt continue to be an actor for some time.

Got that?

Now picture Larry holding his first born, just hours after delivery. I’m spent, as is Baby Girl Emily, from an arduous labor and emergency C-section (Note:Long-laboring moms sign a pledge to mention their ordeal whenever, wherever possible).

But Larry is on a New Daddy high, grinning from ear-to-ear as he says, “John may be the actor in the family, but I have an Emmy.”

I have loved, still love, and will always love that story. Even more so today, the morning after Emily (now a mother of a six-month-old) sent me this text last night.

CAPTURE YOUR FAMILY STORIES WITH iMEMORIES

What's in a name?

My future son-in-law calls me by my first name.

Last week I attended a friend’s retirement party. Past retirees were there. Some, who I had not seen for a while, heard about Em and Ry’s wedding for the first time. I answered the usual questions:

  When?  “First weekend in October.”

  Where? “The Barn at Wesleyan”

  Who? “A college friend. Dated after they graduated. Been engaged over two years.”

Then, sitting down to dinner, a question I didn’t expect surfaced. A colleague  I had not seen for years asked “What will he call you?”

                “Call me?” I wasn’t sure what she meant.

                “Yes, how do you want your daughter’s fiancé to address you?”

                As I considered the question, other marrieds at the table began to respond. “My mother-in-law  wants to be called ‘Mom.’  I always feel funny, but she asked me to,” said one.

                “I try not to call mine anything,” said another. We  laughed . But this tablemate wasn’t trying to be funny.

All this reminded me of how I came to call my mother-in-law “Mrs. Hayden” when Larry and I wed.

Of course, it was a different time – over thirty years ago – and place, in the sphere of social graces. Some behaviors considered rude then are considered quite civil now. This includes for women – the once scandalous act of baring one’s shoulders in church, and for men – the disrespect  wearing a hat at the dinner table use to convey.

But I didn’t call my dear mother-in-law “Mrs. Hayden” because etiquette guru Emily Post instructed me to. I did it because she always referred to her mother-in-law (no longer living) as Mrs. Hayden. How could a daughter-in-law go wrong if she did what her mother-in-law did?

Getting back to my dinner table friends, I answered the question first posed to me. “When Emily and Ryan were just friends, he always called me Mrs. Hayden. But since they’re engaged, he's made a point of calling me ‘Laura.’ “

             “So he refers to you by  your first name,” my friend said.

             “Yes,” I said with caution, not sure what she was getting at.

“That’s good,” she said. For some time, she had  been making  informal observations of how young in-laws address elder in-laws.  Her highly unscientific but nevertheless intriguing finding was “When they refer to each other by name, they get along better.”

A “which came first- the chicken or the egg” conversation followed across the table. Did the first-name address lead to respect or mutual respect lead to the first-name calling? No one could say for sure. But I did say, “After I had children it got easier. I started calling my mother-in-law Meme, like the grandkids.

                “And what will your grandchildren call you?” my friend asked.