A Grad By Any Other Name

 (Crabby-Pants Thursday)

Decades and decades before it was trendy, my older sister was named after my great-grandfather Ashley Rozelle Wilson, farmer and store owner in Mangum, Oklahoma, brief acquaintance of Jesse James, and descendent of James Wilson, signer of both the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and who would annoy my great-grandmother Lucy by letting the Indian chief sleep in the house when the tribe traveled through. (I heard complaints of bear grease on the sheets.)

This all sounds warmly familial, barring the time my mother Martha (yes, we tended to pass names along) brought her newborn daughter to meet him. Apparently he was also a vain man who refused to admit that a girl was carrying his name. His remark: “That’s a fine looking boy you have there, Martha.”

And I remember my father’s fireworks in 1950-something when my sister decided to start writing her name as Ashleigh. Let’s just say it was a very brief flirtation with alternate spelling.

This all came back to me when I was driving around the other day and read a few of the proud graduation signs posted on area lawns. You know, “A Graduate of so-and-so High lives here” with the name written below.

I could only sigh at the parents who 18 years before had to complicate a perfectly lovely name like ‘Emily’ with ‘Emeleigh’.

 

The next sign hit closer to home. It reminded me of the sound Dinah Shore (yes, I’m that old) would make at the end every show when the music would end with “America’s the Greatest Land of All!” and she would throw out a kiss to her audience.   

As the grandmother of our delightful Maya, I harrumphed audibly when I saw that this batch of nincompoops had posted a sign for their child ‘Mya.’