WHAT'S MY NAME?

Name correction or pick a name
By Kelvin Wade
March 10, 2011

What's in a name? When my mother thumbed through a baby name book and named me 'Kelvin,' she doomed me to a lifetime of name correction. I can't count how many times I've been referred to in person or in print as 'Kevin.' The best was when one young woman said, 'Oh, I thought the L was silent.' Why would the L be silent? Why would I include it if it was supposed to be silent? To doom MYSELF to perpetual name correction?

My mother told me the clerk messed up my birth certificate typing 'Kevin' as my given name. My mother pointed out the mistake and the woman said, 'It doesn't really matter.' What? How many people born in Virginia in the '60s are walking around with different names because a clerk was too lazy to type the correct one? My mother let her know that it did matter.

'If I wanted to name him Kevin, I would've named him Kevin!' I can hear my mom's voice saying. It definitely would be her perturbed voice.

Still, in high school, many people called me 'Calvin.' It gets to a point where you just answer to anything because you're tired of correcting it. My best buddy at Armijo called me C.W. for months before finding out my first name was spelled with a K. I didn't want to correct him because I thought C.W. had a nice ring to it.

When I get e-mail addressed to 'Kevin' it's particularly odious because my name is in my e-mail address.

My family has always called me Kel (pronounced Kale). It's a Southern thing. But then again, my family is just strange about names. We refer to our oldest brother Orvis as Jewer. He usually goes by 'OT.' That's two letters, not 'Ot.' Our late brother was Ken (pronounced Key-in). A Southern thing, remember? My brother Tony has never really been called Anthony by the rest of us. He's always been Tony, Tone or 'Banana Head' when he was younger. My youngest brother Scott never goes by his first name, Adrian, for obvious reasons.

Lately I'm questioning if our late dad, Orvis, was even named Orvis. Folks in his hometown of San Augustine, Texas, either called him by his nickname, Punkin, or they called him by his first and middle name, 'Orvis T' (pronounced Ah-vis T). And yes, he and my oldest brother's middle name is 'T.' What's strange is that both on my dad's high school diploma and in genealogy records, his name is spelled Ovis. I guess I can end this mystery by sending for his birth certificate (if I can find out how much it costs to ship a stone tablet out here from Texas.).

As for me, I inadvertently made my name correction problem worse. When I first started going online back in the mid-'90s, I always used my middle name, Jon, whenever meeting anyone online. I was wary back then of using my given name online. So when I met my girlfriend Cathi online, she met me as Jon.

Well, to this day, she and everyone I've met through her know me as 'Jon.' So now I've doomed myself to the 'Pick a Name Game.' Whenever someone asks me my name, I pause for a second to think of which name I'm going to give them and it makes me look like an idiot who can't remember his own name.

What's in a name? A lot more than you'd think. Peace.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
ADDITIONAL NOTES: I still will occasionally answer to Kevin if I'm in a situation where I'm never going to see the person again. You just get tired of correcting it all the time. Jon is pretty straightforward. But then again, when I tell people my name is Jon, they almost always spell it 'John.'

Really I just wanted to do something fun because I've been sick and on six medications and confined to bed for the most part. Had no stomach for much more. But I'm on the mend.

My name? Well, you can call me Ray...or you can call me Jay...<---from an old beer commercial.