Names and
Nicknames
To the
unborn and as-yet unnamed son of Brittany Lucretia Evans and Phillip George
Davis from your grandfather G.R. Davis Jr.
You can be
sure that your parents have given some serious thought to your name. They want your name to be distinctive but not
weird. So far, they’ve considered
Ransom, Huckabee, Asher, and Milo. There
are only about three weeks left before your expected arrival on September 12th,
so a decision cannot be deferred indefinitely.
You don’t
get to participate in the selection of your name, yet most people live the rest
of their lives with their original names.
On the other hand, nicknames may emerge over time. Nicknames can change and can be influenced by
innumerable factors. In this, my first
letter to you, I intend to tell you about names and nicknames on the Davis side
of the family and other nicknames that hold special meaning for me. One reason I’m doing so now at age 67 is in
case I’m not around when you’re old enough to start pondering names and
nicknames. You see, since I’ve turned
60, and married your bonus-grandmother Mary Helen, I’ve been diagnosed with hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy, prostate cancer, and a pontine stroke. Those are health issues over which I had no
control, but which could have killed me already. And in July 2024 while on a father-son
adventure in Peru with your daddy, I fell from a rented motorcycle and broke
five ribs. That could have killed
me. But it didn’t! I’m writing this to you with sore slowly
healing ribs, unsure of what medical misfortunes might lie ahead in the coming
years. In case I croak before you are old
enough to converse with me about names and nicknames, I decided to get this on
paper for you now.
I was born
on July 24, 1957 to George Rufus Davis and Hazel Mae
Ward Davis. (Hazel’s nickname for George was Fuddy Duddy. He called Hazel “Juicy Fruit.”) As the firstborn to George and Hazel and the
first grandchild for Bailey and Mattie Mae Davis, the naming possibilities were
expansive. George and Rufus were common
names on your great grandfather’s side of the family. My mother agreed to have me named George
Rufus Davis, Junior but insisted that I not be called George nor Rufus nor
Junior. Instead, they determined that I
would be called by my initials from the onset.
“G.R.” What a strange uncommon
ungainly pair of letters! One day you
may be old enough to hold an infant in the crook of your arm. Think about how odd it would be to call the
little helpless creature “G.R.” It
doesn’t seem natural. It reminds me of the
character in a movie of my childhood about an
extraterrestrial being who was called E.T.
(another odd pairing.)
I’m not
opposed to people being called by their initials. I’ve known many such people: AJ, JB, BJ, JT, KJ, JL, JR, LB. Your cousin Jaxson Joseph is called JJ. Some people call your bonus-grandmother Mary
Helen by her initials MH. Incidentally,
rather than use the term “step-“ to refer to relatives
acquired in a second marriage, I prefer to call her your bonus-grandmother and her adult children Gentry and Fletcher I
call my bonus daughter and bonus son.
I met your
grandmother Tia Marie Palmisano in June 1980 at the five-year class reunion of
the graduating class of South View Senior High School. In high school, we didn’t really know each
other but had many friends in common as we discovered at the class reunion. We dated intensely over that summer and
fall. I spend a lot of time at her house
doing chores for her dad Joseph Palmisano.
I mowed grass, painted his house, cleaned his workshop, trimmed trees
and more. I felt like the Biblical
Jacob working so hard to earn his favor and his daughter. I called him Boss or The Boss.
When I
married your grandmother Tia Marie Palmisano on August 8, 1981, Tia decided to
retain her maiden name. That was a popular
decision at the time, and a decision I supported. Who’d want to transition from such an elegant
melodic Italian surname Palmisano to the drab Davis appellation? (It just so happens that Palmisano in Italian
is about as common as Smith or Williams is in English.) So, in the days after our wedding, she
changed her name to Tia Marie Palmisano-Davis.
She was a middle school math teacher and later became an assistant
principal. She anticipated the
difficulty those students might experience, trying to call her Ms.
Palmisano-Davis so right away she became Ms. PD. That nomenclature persisted her entire
career. She was so popular in the
Woodruff School System that whenever I visited her there, people would
sometimes call me Mr. PD. In retrospect,
it seems only natural that Tia would be comfortable being called Ms. PD because
for many years her dad was known as Mr. P by his co-workers and the clients in
his tax prep and accounting service that he ran from his home office.
At home, my
nickname for Tia was Pidge, or Pidgy, Miss Pidge, or
The Pidge. I cannot recall the origin,
but everyone on the Davis side of the family referred to her as Miss Pidge or
The Pidge for the rest of her life. She passed away on December 18, 2014 when she was only 57 years old. Shortly thereafter, your parents met.
***
Some of my
earliest memories of school were those first days of class when the teacher
called the roll, looking up from the list at the little people who raised their
hand while saying “Here!” to which I’d
have to add, “I go by my initials, G.R.”
Year after year, even through four years of college and then graduate
school, I endured this first-day-of-class routine.
When I meet
someone for the first time, the conversation typically goes, “I’m G.R.
Davis. I go by my initials.” “What does the G.R. stand for?” “George Rufus. I’m a junior, so I’m not the original. My daddy got the good name. I had no choice. I’ve been called G.R. since I was born.”
To be
honest, I’ve never liked being called G.R., so when my daughter Alayna asked me
what I wanted to be called once I became a grandfather, I thought about it
carefully. I know many grandfathers that
go by PaPa or Pee Pa or PawPaw
or Grandaddy or Grandpa but none of those appealed to me. Tia had passed away before we had any
grandchildren. Tia would have been a
marvelous grandmother who would love intensely and tenderly and with firm expectations. I reasoned that, without Tia, I’d have to be
both a grandfather and stand-in grandmother to these progeny,
so I decided I’d like to be called T-Pa.
The intent was that each time a grandchild called me by that name, it
would remind me of Tia and the role I should attempt to play on her
behalf. I have been well pleased with
this decision and will be delighted if you call me T-Pa when you learn to
speak.
***
For many
months in 1985 before your Aunt Alicia was born, Miss Pidge and I fretted over
names. We struggled to reach an
agreement. We quickly eliminated many
names in my family tree such as Elsworth, Velma, Esther, Darlene, Mattie Mae,
Edna, Estelle, Betty Lou, Dorothy, Marjorie, and Ethel. I liked Caroline and Lorraine. She insisted on including her mother’s middle
name, so when labor began on the morning of July 21st and we still
hadn’t agreed on name, we pulled out the baby name
book again, this time with great urgency.
“Alicia” seemed good because your great-great maternal grandmother was Alice
Matilda Lennon Ward. Your great aunt
Becky was named Rebecca Alice Davis to keep that name in the family. Later that day, we were pleased to commit to
Alica Nell Davis on the birth certificate.
I don’t remember when I began to call her Nell-a-Mundo, but that’s my
nickname for her even now. Rarely, I
call her Alicia Nell Number Five in homage to Chanel No. 5, a perfume quite
popular at that time and said to be “the very essence of femininity!”
***
Your Aunt
Alayna Marie Davis was born on December 22, 1986. Marie was Tia’s middle name which she shared
with her aunt. My favorite aunt was
Marjorie Marie Davis Ellis Bramble. Since Marie had multiple family connections
on “both sides” we quickly agreed to Marie.
But what about that unusual first name?
The smartest
and most beautiful girl in my high school was Amanda Jayne Clamp. We were in lots of classes together. She was so beautiful and smart that none of
the boys had the courage to ask her out.
As the night of the senior Prom approached and I didn’t have a date, I
thought “What’s the worst that could happen?” so I mustered the courage to call
her and ask her if she’d go with me to the prom? I was caught totally by surprise with her
answer: “Let me ask my boyfriend if that would be OK. He’s in college and can’t take me. I’ll get
back to you.” Jeez. None of us knew she had a boyfriend. Had I known that, I’d
never have asked. The next day she let
me know that her boyfriend had approved me to take her to the prom. I wonder how that conversation had gone: “This
scrawny nerd who is a friend of mine at school has asked me to the Prom. You
don’t need to worry about G.R. He’s
harmless. He’s nothing more than a
friend to me, and, since you can’t go with me, it will be better than going
alone.”
Having
secured as my prom date the smartest and most beautiful girl in the whole class
of 480 students, I asked my mom to procure the finest wrist corsage ever
created for a high school prom. On the
fateful day, I went by the florist to pick it up. It was in a delicate box big enough to
accommodate a three-layer cake. The
container had a see-through plastic panel on top. Inside was not the finest wrist corsage ever,
but perhaps the biggest! When I presented it to Amanda Jayne that evening in
the presence of her parents, she graciously (although probably reluctantly) strapped
it to her arm where it stretched from her wrist almost to her elbow. It looked more like a Christmas Tree! At some point during the evening when it
became too cumbersome, she trimmed the top off so that it became merely hideous
rather than monstrous.
Anyhow, I thought
the insertion of the “y” in an otherwise ordinary name like Jane was
marvelous. Tia and I liked the name
Alaina or Alana, but I proposed “Alayna” without telling Tia of the
significance of the “y” until many years later.
When Alayna
was just old enough to sit in a highchair and eat solid food, Tia and I went
out to eat at a buffet restaurant. We crept
along the line past the trays of food while Alayna squirmed in my arms. An older lady behind us commented on what a
pretty baby we had. “Is he eating solid
food already?” she asked. “Yes,” we
replied proudly, not bothering to correct the woman regarding the sex of this
child. “Does he like peaches?” she went on. “This little one loves anything sweet,” we
said. “What about those grapes? Will he eat those?” “Sure will.”
We were
sitting at our table a little while later when the old lady appeared with a
bowl of grapes! “Thank you very much,”
we said in astonishment at this generous act.
And then she asked, “What’s his name?”
It was too late and too awkward to correct her now, so my mind searched
frantically for a boy’s name that sounded like Alayna. I remembered a character in the ridiculous
movie Monty Python and The Holy Grail. In
one scene, the monk Brother Maynard read from the Book of Armaments some rambling
redundant instructions of the sort you’d find in the Old Testament:
“Then did
he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O
Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy
mercy."
Maynard…
that’s pretty close to Alayna, I reasoned in a flash,
so I told the lady “His name is Maynard.”
I forgot what she said, but it was probably something like “Well, that’s
an unusual name, but it fits him.” Ever
since that chance encounter, my nickname for Alayna has been “Brother Maynard”
although most of the time I shorten it to “Mayn,” intentionally savoring the
elegant “y” that it shares with Jayne of such significant origin!
***
From the
time he was a toddler, your daddy was prone to injuring his head, which is
called a “noggin” here in the South.
Thus, Phillip George was nicknamed Nog from
the time he was old enough to fall off a porch or run into a pole or a wall or a
doorframe. His thick skull has served
him well through the years.
***
Mary Helen,
who became my wife on July 29, 2017, was asked by Alayna what she’d like to be
called as the bonus-grandmother of Kiley and JJ. Mary Helen pondered for a long time. She found none of the typical nicknames for
grandmothers appealing. She didn’t want
to be called MeeMaw or MawMaw
or Grannie or Nannie or Nana. As the
birth of Jaxson Joseph loomed in May of 2018 and Mary Helen hadn’t decided,
Alayna warned “If you don’t come up with a name, your grandkids may end calling
for you by saying “Hey, Lady.” Mary
Helen never did propose a nickname for herself, so in
fact, it now seems a perfect fit to have Kiley Marie and JJ call her Hey Lady
or simply Lady. Actually,
neither Kiley nor JJ can pronounce “L” clearly at age 8 and 7,
respectively, so it what they say and what we hear is “Wady.” You are welcome to call her Lady (or Wady) if
you wish!
***
When Nell-a-mundo, Brother Maynard, and Nog
were very young, I gave myself the nickname Padre Baer, derived from the story
of the Papa Bear, the Mamma Bear, and the Baby Baer. When writing or texting my adult children, I
often sign off as Padre Baer, preferring the intentionally transposed letters
in second word and the connotation of informal Catholicism in the first.
***
You were
discovered to be a male child many weeks ago when your mother underwent routine
ultrasonography so that doctors could get a look at the unborn you. Although ultrasound was used during each of
Tia’s three pregnancies, we didn’t not want to know the sex of our children in
advance. For that third pregnancy, I was
silently but seriously hoping for a son, while simultaneously preparing to express
happiness if a third daughter joined us.
Your paternal great grandmother Hazel Mae Ward Davis (Nannie) was very
insistent to learn of the names we were considering for this third child. “If it’s a boy, were thinking about Adolph!”
we sniggered, aware that the only person named Adolph that most people know is
Adolph Hitler, the genocidal Nazi maniac responsible for World War II. “Oh, be serious,” Nannie begged. “We’re thinking about William Robert.” “William Robert,” she mulled, and then asked,
“What would you call him?” “Billy Bob!”
we joked. Her patience was running thin,
so I went on, “Well, we’re considering Andrew Joseph, but would call him A.J.” This was actually truthful. That settled her a bit, but we left the issue
unresolved until the day of your daddy’s birth on September 23, 1988. A tiny wrinkled
baby emerged and this one had a penis! We rejoiced
with exceeding great joy! We named him
Phillip George, after Tia’s dad Joseph Phillip Palmisano and after me and my
father and the many other George’s on my side of the family. We never shortened Phillip to Phil, so when
his classmates at school and later at The Citadel called him Phil, that seemed
foreign to us. Right up to the present,
when anyone calls him Phil, even your mother, that still seems strange to
me.
***
Your great
grandfather George Rufus Davis was called Buck by his siblings, and later Dibbi Dib when he became a grandfather. Your great Uncle David told me how this came
to be. Long ago there was a popular TV
series called the Beverly Hillbillies.
Jed Clampett, the old man on that show, would do a silly dance a while
singing “dibby dibby dibby dibby…..” My daddy George Rufus Davis (who instantly
became George Rufus Davis Sr. when I was named Junior) would do that little
dance with his grandchildren. He was
called Dibbi Dibbi, or Dibbi, or Dib by his children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
Like
everyone else, Dibbi Dib called your daddy Nog but Dibbi
was the only one who called your daddy Spike.
I’m not sure of the origin. It
may have referred to professional wrestlers he watched on TV. Dibbi had nicknames
for most of his grandchildren: Bunk, Jack,
Bo Jack, Bee Bop, Suzie Poozie, and so on.
I’m sure he’d have an endearing name for you but presumably Dibbi and Nannie are strolling the streets of gold,
occasionally going to practice with the heavenly choirs where Dibbi plunges deep down for bass notes in the realm of J.D.
Sumner while Nannie meanders in her alto range as they sing “On the Wings of a
Snow White Dove.” I recently searched
for that tune on the internet and found a version of it sung by Ferlin
Husky. Ferlin, I thought. Now that’s a good distinctive sturdy name so
I texted it to Nog for consideration. It was quickly dismissed as a candidate name
for you.
***
Goerge’s
eldest sister was Marjorie Marie Davis.
She was called “Sister” or “Sissy” by her siblings Bailey (Junior),
George (Buck), Dorothy Mae (Dot Dot), and Paul.
I was the first grandchild born to Willam Bailey and Mattie Mae Davis. The story goes that as I was learning to
talk, when I tried to say “Sister” or “Sissy” when referring to my Aunt Margie,
it came out “Tissie.”
Because of that, she was known for the rest of her life as “Tissie.” That is how
I was responsible for a nickname even before I could speak clearly.
Giving people
nicknames is something I’ve enjoyed for decades. When I was a biology major at Campbell
University, I was recruited to assist with a two-year project to assess water
quality at Lake Waccamaw, NC where several endemic species of fish live. Dr. Charles Gerald Yarbrough was my
supervisor and mentor. During the
summers, we’d spend several days each week at Lake Waccamaw, collecting and
analyzing water samples. We stayed at a
lake house and sat in rocking chairs at the end of the pier each night after a
day’s work. He seemed to know something
about everything: science, literature,
culture, music, anthropology, history, and more. I later learned that such people are called
polymaths. That’s when I decided I
wanted to be a polymath. Anyhow, I
started affectionately calling him Yardbird.
In turn, based on my massive food intake during that period of my life,
he dubbed me Gobblejaws. Yardbird’s wife was a wonderful lady who I
called Lady Bird, which she seemed to like.
Yardbird was very influential in creating a position for me in the
Biology Department at Wingate College even before I had finished my Ph.D. in
physiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was while I was an assistant professor at
Wingate College that I went to an opera in Charlotte with Yardbird and
Ladybird. Your daddy was born in
Charlotte.
***
There are
two nicknames I generated that hold special meaning for me. I met Peter Louis Schmunk shortly after I
started as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Wofford College in 1993. Peter was an art historian, an avid
backpacker and a serious photographer.
He invited me on several hikes in the mountains of North Carolina and
then on a 9-day wilderness backpacking trip with some of his high school
buddies in the Wind River Range in Wyoming.
We developed a deep friendship. I
discovered when I audited his Art History 101 course that this was a great way
to learn about art and history and culture.
We eventually teamed up to lead seven travel-study trips with students
during Wofford’s January term. We
traveled to France, The Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Malta. On each trip the two of us spent most of our
free time making photographs of the landscapes,
architecture, and the people we encountered.
On one of those trips to Italy, the weather had been bleak for many
days, making it challenging to get the type of photographs we sought. Peter muttered, “I’d give my left nut for a
couple of days of sunshine.” The Italian
word for “nut” is “noce” pronounced “NO-chay” and the word for “left” is “sinistra.” I started calling him “Noce sinistra” which
quickly became shortened to “Nooch.” That’s the nickname I consistently used for
him back on campus after that trip and ever since. Our colleagues at Wofford College have called
him Nooch for about twenty years, most of them unaware
of the dubious origin of the term.
Nooch and I
made many trips to Looking Glass Rock north of Brevard, North Carolina. In his off-trail exploration of Looking Glass
Rock, Peter found an isolated granite cliff face that few people knew about. The two of us frequently camped there. I named the place Noochay’s
Rock. On the very edge of that cliff was
a small red cedar tree that clung to a tiny crevice in the granite. It received just enough water to survive by a
trickle that ran along a tiny channel that ended in that crevice. Nooch’s daughter
Hannah (Hannah Banana) saw that tree and nicknamed her Trudy. The name stuck. Peter and I referred to any hike to that
location as a visit to see Trudy. We
have many photographs of Trudy through all seasons of the year. On one trip we were appalled and disgusted to
discover that someone had severed Trudy’s trunk with an axe, leaving only the mangled
roots. We don’t know whether Trudy was
used for firewood or to make a one-of-a-kind lamp fixture, but whatever her
fate, we were sad and angry that someone could be so inconsiderate and selfish. Although Trudy is no longer a resident of Noochay’s Rock, I hope to take you there someday so you can
experience a view that has meant much to me over the decades.
Nooch
arranged an overnight backpacking trip on a segment of the Appalachian Trail
near Mount Leconte for the two of us and our friend and colleague David
Whisnant (a chemist and later head of Wofford’s Information Technology
Department.) The plan was for the two of them to embark from the trailhead in
the early afternoon. I was to arrive
later and catch up with them in time for us to camp together along the trail
near Mount Leconte. I hustled along The
Boulevard, as that segment of the trail is known, but was unable to find them
before it grew too dark to continue. I
camped in a shelter with other hikers and rose early in the morning hoping to
find Nooch and Dave a little further along the
trail. I found them in a shallow cave
where they had set up their tents, had their supper, and spent the night. The floor of that cave consisted of a thick
layer of fine dust. By the time I
arrived, they had finished breakfast and were packing up their tents. Dave was coated in dust. His tent was coated in dust. His backpack and camera bag were coated in
dust. Meanwhile, Nooch
had managed to remain pristine. The name
of the place was Alum Cave. Dave’s nickname suddenly came to me: Dusty Dave of Alum Cave! The nickname stuck and thereafter all our
friends called him Dusty Dave or simply Dusty.
Weather
permitting during the school year, Dusty, Nooch and I
gathered for lunch at a group of benches under a shady tree on the main lawn of
Wofford’s campus. Others frequently
joined us. Many a pleasant lunch hour was spent with friends and colleagues on
those benches. I named this assembly The
Hernia Club because most of us had had surgery to repair hernias. Those who had not undergone surgery yet were
prone to hernias as we often had to rearrange those heavy metal benches into a
circle to enjoy our lunch conversations.
Members of The Hernia Club included sociologist Gerald Thurmond (Juurl), psychologist John Lefebvre (King John of the
Psychology Kingdom at Wofford), the quite elderly government professor Jack
Sykes (Jumpin’ Jack), biologist David Kusher (Kusher
or Kush), and a few other regulars who remain nicknameless.
***
My first
safari to Africa during Wofford’s January Interim term was with fellow
biologist Ab Abercrombie and campus minister Reverend Ron Robinson. I ascribed a haughty binomial Latin name to
each of us as if we belong to a certain genus of animal. Ab was Flatus noxious, Rev Ron was Flatus
ecclesiasticus, and I was Flatus pungens briefly before switching to Flatus maximus.
On the next trip my traveling colleague was the handsome young biologist John
Moeller who I named Flatus adonis.
***
I'll
conclude with one more story about nicknames.
When Mother
Pidge and I relocated to Spartanburg SC in 1993 we met the Wilkins family. Janice was the secretary at Saint Paul the Apostle
Catholic school where Tia took a job as a math teacher an assistant principal. She and her husband Frank had three boys: Terrill, William, and Stephen. They were the same
ages as Alicia, Alayna, and Phillip. Our families became very close. Janice converted to Catholicism and shared
her beautiful voice as a Cantor with the choir.
I nicknamed her Vaticus. Frank aspired to be a really
cool character so I named him Luke Warm. Here I'll
tell you how Terrill got his nickname.
Terrell Dean
Wilkins was a huge fan of the North Carolina basketball Tar Heels who were
coached at that time by the already legendary Dean Smith. Thus his name became
Terrell Dean Smith Wilkins, but it didn't stay that way very long.
One weekend
I decided to give Mother Pidge and Vaticus a break
from childcare, so I loaded up the old Ford Econoline van with six kids, two tents,
a camping stove, sleeping bags, and all the other clutter necessary for an
overnight at Table Rock State Park campground.
We set up the tents and feasted
on several cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew.
We toasted mallows-de-marsh (my term for marshmallows) over the glowing
embers. When it got late, Alicia and Alayna
retreated to their tent while the four boys and I crammed into our larger tent.
As we got
settled in the darkness, Terrill asked if there were any reports of wild
animals bothering campers. I saw this
as a great opportunity to be creative, so I made up a story about a bobcat who
sliced open a tent with his sharp claws and extracted a young camper. The bobcat dragged the little boy into the
woods and had a nice meal. Terrell Dean
Smith Wilkins listened in wide-eyed disbelief.
“That's not true,” he said, to which I responded, “I know that's a
fantastic story and I don't really expect you to believe me, but when you get
home you should look up the report in the Greenville News and Spartanburg
Herald Journal. I forget what year it
was, but if you look hard enough, you’ll find an article that tells of that
event in both of those newspapers.”
Everyone was
very quiet. I could tell that Terrill Dean Smith Wilkins was pondering my
claims and would certainly do a search for this information when he got home.
The rest of
the trip was uneventful except for 1) William and Stephen snoring loud enough
to earn the nickname Snot-rattlers and2) a drenching downpour that forced us to
abandon the campsite and return home before daybreak with soggy tents and
sleeping bags. Terrill’s new nickname
was Terrill Dean Smith “Bobcat” Wilkins and remained such until Dean Smith
retired and was replaced by coach Bill Guthridge. Thenceforth, he was Terrill Dean Smith
“Bobcat” Bill Guthridge Wilkins. Now he
lives in Chicago with his wife. What a
coincidence that both are lawyers who are concerned with finding the truth
based on facts and evidence. I always
sensed that Terrill Dean is particularly proud of his nickname. I certainly am. His is by far the lengthiest I have produced
thus far.
You as a
young reader may suspect the veracity of this story. In fact, I hope you grow up to be skeptical when
people tell you things that are hard to believe. However, in this case you need only ask your
dad if it is true. He will be happy to
tell you!
***
Your
great-great grandfather William Bailey Davis was born in 1900. Your great grandfather George Rufus Davis was
born in 1930. I, G. R. Davis Jr, was
born in 1957, and your daddy Phillip George Davis was born in 1988. You’ll be born in 2024. Including you, we’re talking five generations
of Davis’s in 124 years.
I wish I
could tell you more about your ancestors that preceded William Bailey but I can’t.
I’ve been afraid to investigate because of what I might discover. Perhaps going further back into your lineage,
there would be slave owners, although I seriously doubt that our relatives were
wealthy enough to own slaves. It is also
unlikely there were wealthy philanthropists.
It is more likely your ancestors on the Davis limb of your family tree
were farmers if names were chosen based on profession or appearance. George
means “tiller of the soil” and Rufus means “red haired.”
In recent
years with advances in genetic analysis, it is now possible to discover aspects
of human ancestry that far surpass the old hand-sketched genealogies. By looking at combinations of genetic
markers, people can learn of their origins and ethnicities. Using results from companies like Twenty-three
and Me and Ancestry.com, some people glow with pride as they describe their
connections to European royal families.
Others are pleased to discover they have famous relatives. I’ve never been tempted to have my DNA
analyzed. Here is my thinking: since I have no control over my ancestry, I
have no reason to feel pride if I were to discover that I am related to
outstanding individuals. By the same
reasoning, I wouldn’t want to feel shame if some of my relatives were criminals
or slave-owners or swindlers. You see, I
believe that each of us, regardless of how much DNA we share with royalty or
renegades, are individually accountable.
I would deserve no particular admiration if my
ancestors were kings, nor should I bear any blame if I had a rapist among
them. The same is true for you. Although you are being born into a reputable (although
imperfect) family with a strong sense of morals and ethics, that does not
guarantee that you will develop into a man of character. That’s up to you. Although you have no control over the genes
that you were given by your parents, you do have control over your behavior and
how you relate to people. It is my hope that you grow up to be worthy of
respect and admiration, a humble generous contemplative compassionate person
who can be counted onto do what is right and best in every situation. I hope you treat others as you would have
them treat you. And I’d give my left nut
for you to be admired as a polymath!
***
There are
many more friends and relatives I nicknamed based on events or personal
attributes or mere whim but there is no need to write more on this topic. I
suppose that in the next few years as you grow and become unique, someone will
give you a nickname. Perhaps that
someone will be me! I hope you like the names
given by your parents and any nicknames you accumulate as much as I cherish
being called Padre Baer and T-Pa.
G.R. Davis,
Jr.
30 August
2024
Post script: While your mother was experiencing labor
pains as you were born on September 3rd, 2024, your daddy was in
agony with a kidney stone. Shortly after
learning that you had been named Mylo Phillip Davis, your Uncle Barry Pierce
gave you the nickname “Mylstone.” You are certainly a milestone in our family. I love that nickname and wish I had thought
of it. We will
see if it sticks!