The Name Game

For months , before the arrival of my first son, my husband and I spent hours on end trying to contrive the perfect name for our first born. We wanted something meaningful and special. My husband turned down my suggestion of Jameson, saying that it sounded like I picked it off the shelf of a liquor store. And I quickly vetoed his suggestion of John Deere Putnam. "Are you kidding?" I replied, "I can hear the kids on the playground, "Hey John Deere want to come mow my lawn?"

After much deliberation and great thought we decided on Scott Michael Putnam Jr., after my husband of course. We thought our eldest son would be proud to share his Daddy's name. Yet, he insists that everyone call him Peter.

Everywhere we go he proudly boasts his name is "Peter the Knight!" Last week I dropped my son off for his first swimming lesson at the local YMCA. When I returned to pick him up, the instructor walked my son over to me with a perplexed look on her face and asked, "is this your son?"

"Oh, boy. What did he do now?," was my first thought. "Yes," I replied.

"What is his name?"

"Scott," I said.

"And his last name?" she asked.

"Putnam," I knew where this was heading.

The swimming coach continues, patting my son on the head, "He told us his name was Peter the Knight. So I thought he meant Peter Knight. But I didn't have a Peter Knight on my roster. I thought we had the wrong kid in the class."

With an embarrassed giggle, I said I was sorry and explained that my son has decided to call himself "Peter the Knight" after a character in the movie Narnia.

I'm sure that there are a lot of little boys that prefer to be called by names that they think are way cooler than their own. Like Spiderman, Superman, or Batman, but at least if they tell someone that their name is Superman, one can infer that is not his real name. Although if my husband was ready to name our son after a tractor than I am sure that there are some boys out there with some Super names.