Jon is John

If you had to name a dozen children would you buy a book of popular names? Do you have enough rellies to name them after?

After several years along the Alzheimer's trajectory I asked my mother how she came to name each of her 12 children. It was mostly an exercise to keep her diminishing cognitive abilities functioning but was fueled by my curiosity. I'd often wondered how anyone could come up with a name as boring, mundane and plain uninteresting as John. A name so common it was used for anonymity. Her answer surprised me.

The first two were easy; Helena was her mother's name and Peter was my father's name. Anita was my father's suggestion and Paul was quickly changed to Pauline when my 3rd sister was born. Eileen was my mother's sister and Tony, well, honestly I can't remember what Mom said but she'd no relatives so named so it must have come from my father. By the time she got to number seven (me) she said she had an opportunity to name a child with a name she just liked. And I liked that.

But as a youth I didn't. John was synonymous with toilet, a hooker's client, an unidentified corpse, a suggested name on your new cheques and the classic tragedy “Dear John...”.

Remember the movie "A Star is Born"? It was 1976, Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson were on the screen and the opening credits showed the producer of the movie was Jon Peters (apparently he'd been Barbra's hairdresser before elevating himself). I loved the European look and it sounded just...like...John. I liked it so I took it (I take after my eldest brother). Here's an edit: since writing this I applied for an Irish citizenship just because I could and discovered my mother's grandfather - my great grandfather - was named John. Perhaps Mom was further down the Alzheimer's road than either of us wanted to believe, confabulation being her effort to resist.

Mom's gone now and my need to differentiate has long since passed. In honour of my mother's memory and to accept who I am, I'm reverting to the name she gave me...just because she liked it.