Quick, Somebody Say Something

Today I'm sitting at my desk, reading my usual morning allotment of random internet crap, and I start looking more closely at people's names. See, I've been reading quotes from the show "House", and one of them threw me off.


Dr. House: [to the crowd in the walk-in clinic's waiting area] Hello, sick people and their loved ones! In the interest of saving time and avoiding a lot of boring chitchat later, I'm Doctor Gregory House; you can call me "Greg." I'm one of three doctors staffing this clinic this morning.


Dr. House and I have the same first name, which I hadn't known until now. (I really should watch that show more, based on the quotes and the snippets I've seen, I would really enjoy it. Anyway.) 


For some reason, I find myself staring at our name and feeling very odd. It's such a guttural little bundle of letters. I looked it up on a baby names website, and learned that it is based on a Greek word meaning "Watcher". Huh. That's sort of appropriate. I've grown into a person whose main interest in life is observation. I relentlessly pursue information and knowledge. I am also a security guard, a job I enjoy very much, whose main job is to watch things. What an amusing coincidence.


Okay, so what about other people? My girlfriend's name is Vanessa. Applying the same painstaking research (i.e. punching it into Google) I arrive at an interesting fact: "vanessa" doesn't actually mean anything. It was invented by author Jonathan Swift as a pet name for his friend Esther. It has no etymology, no linguistic meaning, no nationality. It was simply a pleasant sound. In all probability it was likely a sexual reference of some kind.


So what's in a name? Did my parents comb the baby name books for something inspiring and relevant? They couldn't have; I wasn't born yet. I could just as easily have been blind. "Watcher" would have been sort of silly in that case. Rather than being strangely appropriate, my name could have indicated a trait nothing like any of  mine. I was utterly without personality or background. 


I don't really know what point I'm trying to make here. I guess it just seem strange that we pick names for our children that have meanings and origins, when those meanings don't really indicate anything about that child yet. 


Catholics, at their confirmation, ritualistically choose a new, symbolic name for themselves; maybe there's something to that. Before I left the Church, I was going to choose the name Harry, after my grandfather, who was himself a Catholic. (Which means "Home Ruler.", I now find out.) I don't know that the religious aspect is important, but I like the concept of a person choosing to identify himself personally, rather than being bound to whatever irrelevant bundle of letters their parents chose at their birth.


However, not being a Catholic or any other cult, I remain Gregory. Watcher.


Okay mom and dad, you got lucky on that one.