What's in a Name (Part 1)

My dad was a man of his word. If he told you he would do something, he would do it. There may not have been a specification of when it would happen but it was as good as done if he professed to do it. He was also a fairly simple man. He didn’t really see the need for so many words in the world. He often complained about going to the doctor because they said a lot. He also did not think there was any need for so many names.

He didn’t care if your name was Robert, Abdul or Yin. No matter your appellation, he would call you Johnny.  This was the case for males. If I remember, he was much better with female names or would just not say the name. This was startling to most people, especially if they had a name tag that clearly displayed their forename.

For instance, we were on a trip to Canada for a family wedding. We stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank. My dad rolled down the window and the attendant came over to greet us. The tag on his chest clearly displayed that his name was Mohamed. My dad, however, told ‘Johnny’ to ‘fill it up’. My siblings and I sat in the back seat trying not to crack up when we could visibly see this nice fellow was never christened ‘Johnny’.

Other examples were the many nice occasions when we would go out to dinner or to a party and my dad would tell Maurice or Steve to leave his appetizer salad for ‘after dinner, Johnny!’ Papa Luigi always wanted his salad at the end of the meal. God forbid Johnny, or anyone else for that matter, took his greens away before he was ready for them. Often there was also the request, ‘Johnny, can you bring me some ice for my wine?’ Yes, my dad liked an ice cube in his red wine. He always said that warm wine made him sleepy. As long as Johnny followed his instructions, all would be calm in the world.

The best part of all of this was that people often had trouble pronouncing my dad’s name (well, until the Mario brothers came along. After that he was famous!). There was often Weegee (rhymes with squeegee for that wonderful time in New York’s history where no car window was safe!), or Luis or even just Lou. At least those last two were in the ballpark in a way. You would think that having his name mispronounced would make him pay more attention. That was definitely not the case. My dad was more of the ‘eff you’ mentality on names, as in you are lucky I even decided to call you anything non-offensive at all. I don’t really know why I thought he would be more correct in name usage given that he would call us different nicknames at home.

There was a good decade of my life where I was convinced that my dad didn’t even know my real name. I was, after all, christened every single natural disaster imaginable by my dad. ‘Hey Tempest, come here’ or ‘Little Earthquake, bring me my glass of wine!’ My dad preternaturally knew I would be encountering name issues so he gave me an early education.