Honor Inspired

So I was reading Honor's blog a moment ago and she inspired me to discuss our names.

Cullen, which from many accounts means "handsome" in Gaelic, is technically a masculine name. Hence all the mail I've received as "Mr. Cullen blah blah blah." My parents named me after a friend in Sebastopol who was 60 at the time but has by now passed away. She got her name from a neighbor, I was given to understand. Apparently, by the time she came along her parents had run out of ideas and the neighbor named her after some character in a novel. Which one I'll never know. I confess I've truly enjoyed having such a unique name (oh, alright. Except in 2nd grade when I really wanted to be Anne). No one ever asks, "which Cullen." In fact, to glory in my uniqueness I googled my first and maiden name together and absolutely nothing but me comes up. Can't say the same for my married name, but then most of the results are of a manly nature. So far, to my knowledge, I am the only girly Cullen. I have and have had so many nicknames, most of which do not pertain to my name. They include Cully, Bears, Culley-Bear, Deer Legs, Booby, Becca, Ratlina, Fountain Ferry and there's a story behind every one of them. Ask sometime and I'll tell you. And yes, they're all from my dad, but Caz is the only other person I know that uses one. Generally, most people don't go with the nicknames, but I'll answer to just about anything, including Collen and Helen. And the most famous my name has ever been was as the bad guy in Kindergarten Cop. Check it out some time.

And it is perhaps because of this uniqueness and the enjoyment of it that I really wanted a unique name for our son. Not uniquely spelled, but a name that still tied to our heritage and to meaning. While I don't consider myself a fulfillment of my name's meaning (handsome) that didn't stop me from trying to make that so for Cashel. Clay felt that a nickname was important because it had been important in his family. He liked "Cash" and I liked "Cashel" so everyone was happy. Cashel means "castle" in Gaelic. I confess I was quite annoyed when we heard of the existence of at least three other Cashel's around his age. And when I tell people his name is Cash instead of giving his full name I find out that there are tons of Cash's out there that people know. That's when I can't stop myself from clarifying that his full name is Cashel. The odds are, however, that he too will grow up with a name of the level of uniqueness of his dad, if not mine :)

Clayton or Clay, as he became known in his initial lindy-hopping years, is a pretty unique fella (if I do say so myself). He pretty much has every skill known to man and can do a fantastic job at anything he wants to, which makes it pretty tough to decide what he wants to do. I hope Cash takes after him and not me. I actually kidded him the other day for the meaning of his name, which is nothing interesting (a town on the clay) but I can honestly say I've personally only every met two Clayton's in my life thus far and he is one of them. I have seen it used for the name of a mouse in some kids movie too. I think that's all there is to the name of Clay. Although, I think that Clay suits him much more than Clayton, but I imagine that when he was a little boy (or was Clay ever little :) it was much more fitting. That's the nice thing about a name you can modify. It's not like some where it won't fit you when you're older or vice versa.

I love hearing about other people's names.