In Which I Prattle On About My Name
On the subway a woman mentioned to her friend that she heard "her" song on the radio this morning-"Jane", by the Barenaked Ladies, which she joked was named after her (presumably, her name was Jane). That got me thinking about my name, and how there will never be a song named after me.
I blame my mother. Her name is Patricia, and she was called "Fatsy Patsy" in school, which she rather understandably loathed. She vowed to name her children names that were immutable, and she followed through on this vow fairly admirably. There's not a lot you can do to "Murray". I've been called "Blurry Murray" (ooh, I'm stung), "Furry Murray" (despite my non-hirsuteness), "Curry Murray" (no idea, really). I kept waiting for someone to grind me up into an thin mixture of me and water and callme "Slurry Murray", but it never happened.
An unfortunate corollary, however, is that the name Murray also utterly fails to appear in any of the more positive aspects of given names: on mugs, placemats, door plaques, bicycle license plates, etc (at least, it failed to do so in my youth; with the advent of computers and the proliferation of names like "Bethanee" and "Starkeesha" I suspect the process is a lot more my-what-an-interesting-name friendly these days). I never got a plaque that said "Murray's Room", or a placemat that said "Murray's Place". My friend, Mark, got all of them, the bastard.
I can remember jumping up and down in front of my television set at the conclusion of Romper Room, waving my arms to attract the lady's attention as she looked through her magic mirror and "saw" her viewers: "I see Billy... and Sally... and Elizabeth... and Johnny..." *Jump, jump, wave, wave, shout* "...and Robert... and Mustafa-Hakeem..." *jump, wave, cartwheel, look at me you beeyotch dammitdammitdammit*
There are no famous characters named Murray. There was Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore show, a boyfriend in Clueless, and the dog on Mad About You. That's it. Really1. There's never going to be an action hero ("Who can save us now? ...Why, look! It's Murray! Murray of the Mountain!"). There's never going to be a song about a guy named Murray, unless it is a song about a hapless schmoe or bumbling fool2.
How about you? Are you saddled with a too-rare-to-get-branded-stuff-as-a-kid name? Or did you luck out on the whole name-plaque front, like davesbrain3?
1. In several films and television shows, characters named Murray are referenced but not seen. That is, principal characters refer to someone named "Murray" but the Murray character never appears on screen. Mysteriously, in every instance these characters are accountants.
2. This is not to say that I have not tried. My full name fits nicely into several pre-existing popular songs; why radios continue to eschew my obviously smash hit suggestions is beyond me. I've used "Seal_Clubber" here in place of my real name, but you get the idea:
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber when she comes!
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber when she comes!
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber when she comes!
Feel free to sing that in your shower. I won't mind.
3. Mind you, davesbrain got the opposite side of the spectrum: there were so many Daves in our circle of friends that we had to call them by their individual last names just to differentiate.
I blame my mother. Her name is Patricia, and she was called "Fatsy Patsy" in school, which she rather understandably loathed. She vowed to name her children names that were immutable, and she followed through on this vow fairly admirably. There's not a lot you can do to "Murray". I've been called "Blurry Murray" (ooh, I'm stung), "Furry Murray" (despite my non-hirsuteness), "Curry Murray" (no idea, really). I kept waiting for someone to grind me up into an thin mixture of me and water and callme "Slurry Murray", but it never happened.
An unfortunate corollary, however, is that the name Murray also utterly fails to appear in any of the more positive aspects of given names: on mugs, placemats, door plaques, bicycle license plates, etc (at least, it failed to do so in my youth; with the advent of computers and the proliferation of names like "Bethanee" and "Starkeesha" I suspect the process is a lot more my-what-an-interesting-name friendly these days). I never got a plaque that said "Murray's Room", or a placemat that said "Murray's Place". My friend, Mark, got all of them, the bastard.
I can remember jumping up and down in front of my television set at the conclusion of Romper Room, waving my arms to attract the lady's attention as she looked through her magic mirror and "saw" her viewers: "I see Billy... and Sally... and Elizabeth... and Johnny..." *Jump, jump, wave, wave, shout* "...and Robert... and Mustafa-Hakeem..." *jump, wave, cartwheel, look at me you beeyotch dammitdammitdammit*
There are no famous characters named Murray. There was Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore show, a boyfriend in Clueless, and the dog on Mad About You. That's it. Really1. There's never going to be an action hero ("Who can save us now? ...Why, look! It's Murray! Murray of the Mountain!"). There's never going to be a song about a guy named Murray, unless it is a song about a hapless schmoe or bumbling fool2.
How about you? Are you saddled with a too-rare-to-get-branded-stuff-as-a-kid name? Or did you luck out on the whole name-plaque front, like davesbrain3?
1. In several films and television shows, characters named Murray are referenced but not seen. That is, principal characters refer to someone named "Murray" but the Murray character never appears on screen. Mysteriously, in every instance these characters are accountants.
2. This is not to say that I have not tried. My full name fits nicely into several pre-existing popular songs; why radios continue to eschew my obviously smash hit suggestions is beyond me. I've used "Seal_Clubber" here in place of my real name, but you get the idea:
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber when she comes!
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber when she comes!
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber
She'll be riding Seal_Clubber when she comes!
Feel free to sing that in your shower. I won't mind.
3. Mind you, davesbrain got the opposite side of the spectrum: there were so many Daves in our circle of friends that we had to call them by their individual last names just to differentiate.