StoryWorth: Alice's Name
gilana gave me an awesome gift! For a year, StoryWorth will send me writing prompts and at the end of the year turn the stories I write into a keepsake book. I've decided to also share them here--I'll use the tag "storyworth" to keep them together--so we can all hope for more regular posting from me. Gilly says she loves my stories and I'm excited to be encouraged to do more writing and maybe even to tell some new ones, though many of them may be familiar. Enjoy!
How did you choose your children's names?
When I was little someone-probably one of my sisters-told me that if I had been a boy, I would have been named Alexander after one of my mother’s uncles and, I later discovered, one of my first ancestors to come to America from Scotland. When I asked my mother why she hadn’t named me Alexandra, a name I think would have suited me very well, she would only say “Tsk! That’s no name for a girl baby.” An inveterate rebel, I decided immediately that when I had a girl I would definitely name her Alexandra.
When I finally became pregnant and we started talking about names I still thought that I would choose Alexandra. But after a visit to my husband’s Great-Uncle Jack and his wife, Alice, I began thinking that might be an even better choice.
Jack and Alice were a wonderful couple. Married for more than fifty years when I met them, they were still clearly in love-he was her cowboy and she was his princess. They were old-fashioned Broadway folk-Jack played Benedict in the first professional New York production of Much Ado About Nothing, staged in Central Park by Joe Papp years before the construction of the Delacorte Theater, and he had a successful career in theatre, film, and television and a suprise post-retirement gig as the voice of Subaru. Great-Aunt Alice loved to tell stories of the more famous actors and directors Jack worked with-George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, James Earl Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Angela Lansbury, and so many more.
They never had any children and I thought that naming our child for her would be a way of letting Great-Aunt Alice know that she would be remembered and treasured as part of our family. It also satisfied my mother’s naming advice, “No more than five letters, no more than two syllables,” which she never followed and perhaps contributed to none of her children using our given names. Alice was only the 400th most popular girl name the year before our daughter was born, but one that we thought most people would recognize, thanks to Lewis Carroll. We liked the resonance with Alice in Wonderland, Alice B. Toklas, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and other famous Alices.
When I mentioned to our parents that we were thinking of “Alice,” each of our fathers said “Oh, after my grandmother,” and we said yes, of course. Even though that wasn’t the original motivation, it was good to know that this was a name that would connect our daughter with both sides of her family.
We had a couple of other options-Julianne and Claire-that each have their own stories and, amusingly, were chosen for the daughters of two of my ex-boyfriends who were born the same month as ours. But Alice was always the front-runner and as soon as she was laid on my chest I knew that was the right name for our kid.
Before we filled out the birth certificate we called Great-Aunt Alice to ask her blessing. She laughed and, I think, cried just a little, and told us that we didn’t have to do that. We told her that we wanted to and then she admitted that she had always rather hated her name-it sounded so old-fashioned to her. I suggested that she didn’t have a marvelous aunt to be reminded of when she heard it. We took our Alice to visit her great-great-aunt early and often before her death in 2016 and they always had a great deal of sympathy and fondness for each other. We try to pass on some of Great-Aunt Alice’s wonderful stories and remind our Alice often of her beautiful home overlooking the Hudson River.
Our Alice enjoys her name, even though it has gained in popularity, breaking into the Top 100 a year after she was born. There are a couple of other Alices at school, but never one in the same class. The biggest problem is that so many people mistakenly hear “Alex” and think her name must be Alexandra.
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