I hope someday he’ll find this entry (among those that I’m less inclined to share) and understand the nomenclature, whatever the final result. His mother, despite her initial protest, surprised me by using it to refer to him no less than twice last night, but apparently a co-worker brought up Chuck’s word “trauma” again. My stance remains if that’s his greatest obstacle to socialization, he’s set; in some future classroom of Liams and Mayas, how would a John or Mary fare?
Not that 老婆 has made such a suggestion, but hers have gone from Kaden to Connor to, most recently, Valerian—which does, to its credit, contain her entire name; it would, however, deprive him of his own initial, and he’d almost certainly never be called by the full version unless civilization were to revert to a glorious era of swords and sorcery—the fact that it has in shorter than the month since we’ve known tells me they’re alternates, not ideas. Xavier came to me while running that weekend before seeing the doctor, after giving up trying to convince a person I’d met in an office that there was more to Avery than labels. Harve conjures the image of a balding White man; Harvey, one with half a face. Linus would combine both our families, without the subtlety of an anagram, and has polled better, but feels out of time. If not so much as Valerian.
But still, there’s three months left to decide. If experience tells us anything, it’ll be a nail-biter. Son, please know that my intention was never to make you the mere product of a jumble game, but if the rule is for you to be stuck with my last name, then you should be given one that allows you to be someone else yet always reminds you of the wonderful woman who did make you.
Update (January 27, 2009): Grandma’s been thinking of one on her own, and suggested 杰威 (jiéwēi). Sheil made the connection that it combines our names. Of course my knowledge of Chinese is laughable, probably worse than yours by the time you can read this, so my contribution’s naught, while your mom wants to use the alternate 傑 character to offset your overbearing zodiac.
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