There's just a short item in one of Vancouver's "street newspapers," the newest one actually, Star Metro Vancouver (May 22, 2018), the author of which is Cherise Saucharan. "Cherise"--ah, people concoct such interesting names these days, but usually names without historical foundation.
Remember that in the previous post I complained that a major characteristics of liberalism is disdain for the past and for traditions? This has also carried over into the naming of children. My first name is that of my paternal grandfather, since I am the first son in my family. My middle name is "Harm," after my father's oldest brother. And so it went in my tradition. But liberals don't like tradition and so they seldom name their children after senior family members; they just concoct any name they like, perhaps an existing name or something they concoct themselves.
Liberalism is a powerful ideology that has even spilled over onto people who would be shocked to be called liberal. My wife and I, staunch non-liberals as we are, fell for that when naming our children. The first names of the first two were just shaken out of our sleeves and had no historical connection to our extended family. Their names arperfectly fine, but they are the product of liberal spill over. They are Cynthia and Kevin respectively, with Kevin being the oldest. In this post, I follow tradition: Ladies first!
But we did not fall for that liberal tradition altogether. Our daughter's middle name is a combination of both of her grandmothers. Sadly, neither grandmother accepted that name as legitimately named after them. The middle name of our first son is that of my youngest brother, Dick. Dick is the youngest of ten siblings and the only born Canadian in my birth family. We decided to honour him through our first son, for, we reasoned, being the last of ten, no one will name any of their children after him. For years, Dick did not believe our explanation, but after we repeated it enough over the decades, I believe he's come around and accepts it--with some degree of pleasure, I believe.
But that son has a third name or, if you prefer, a second middle name: Samu'ila. Though born in the USA, it was during our Nigeria missionary years. We had been married seven years before his arrival and so we called him Samu'ila, which is the Hausa version of Samuel, whose birth story you find in the Old Testament at I Samuel 1. That Samuel was also the end product of many years of agonizing prayer. Of course, it wasn't only prayer that brought him into this world--just thought you should understand! Hausa is a major West African language that we spoke during our 30 years there and still speak.
By the time our youngest son came around, we had come around as well--from that liberal spill over, that is. We named him after our two grandfathers. We retained the original Dutch version of my father's name Wiebe and that became his our son's first name, of which he has always been proud and even used it as a successful ploy, together with his Nigerian dress, during his election campaign for college student council. His maternal grandfather's name was a Frisian one difficult to pronounce for non-Frisians. After the family's immigration to the States, he took the name "Charles,"probably the closest English equivalent, but if we used that for his middle name, his initials would be "W. C." Those who know gentrified English, will realize that this would make him a butt of jokes: "water closet"-- in other words, "toilet!" So we turned to "Karl" instead.
It is of some family interest and pride that Grandfather's complete name is Prins Charles, a name you've heard before, I'm sure. The family is kind of proud of that connection to Prince Charles, but regret that the similarity stops there! They would have liked an invitation to the latest wedding!
If you are an analytical reader, you may have noticed I have described liberals both as anti-tradition and traditional at the same time, something that only looks like a contradiction. Traditional liberals tend to be against long established traditions--and that is their tradition. Yes, they have their own traditions, the ones they themselves created over a period of time that is long enough to have created new traditions. You might say they are non-traditional traditionalists. This is another good topic for another day, soon.
Did I ever get side tracked today. I was going to talk about Cherise's article and never got to it. Well, to entice you to look for it within a few days, here's what would have been today's title: "My Body a Distraction?"
