I met some new friends this weekend…Amy and Jamie. Amy just moved here from Virginia. She is aspiring to be…a singer? an Actress? whatever works.<\/p>\n
She was aspiring for a long time to live in LA. Now she is, so she feels like she’s made serious progress.<\/p>\n
Her full name is Amanda, but she doesn’t like it. She said that she went by “Amanda” for a brief, weird period in time. Apparently, the guy she was dating knew a different Amy that treated him badly. He didn’t want to call her Amy, too.<\/p>\n
That relationship ended.<\/p>\n
But Amy was thinking that she might need a new name for her new city.<\/p>\n
“What do you think?” she said. “I want something more powerful! Amy is a very passive name.”<\/p>\n
Jamie was having nothing to do with this. “Your name is your name. You are who your name is. You can’t just change it!”<\/p>\n
Well, that’s not my philosophy at all! Those of you who know me understand that I have unique naming conventions. MURPHY is not my real name…<\/p>\n
So I looked at Amy and tried to think of more powerful names. “Rebekah?” I said.<\/p>\n
“Hmmm…” was her response.<\/p>\n
“Well, let’s see…you want powerful names…maybe a verb.
\nI have it! ‘Di’ as in Diana! That’s a powerful name!!”<\/p>\n
Jamie didn’t think that was funny, but _I_ thought it was hilarious.<\/p>\n
This got me thinking about action verb names. Right then, I couldn’t think of any other feminine names that were action verbs. Jamie wasn’t playing, anyway, so I let it drop.<\/p>\n
But TODAY!<\/p>\n
While setting up a video conference for someone my new conference producer appears on the TV screen and introduces himself, “Hello, This is Neil. I will be your producer today.<\/p>\n
“Neil?” I said. “That’s one of those cool action verb names.”<\/p>\n
Neil himself was very cool. I told him that there weren’t very many female verb names, and about Amy, nee “Di”.<\/p>\n
So we both started thinking of names. I told him they were mostly masculine names. “Like Stu.”<\/p>\n
He smiled. “Yeah… And Phil!”<\/p>\n
That made me laugh.<\/p>\n
But Neil was challenged now. He had to think of girl’s names.<\/p>\n
“Carrie!”<\/p>\n
“Ooh! good one.”<\/p>\n
Neil works in a big conference support pool, so he got the other guys involved in coming up with names. I walk like a wraith from conference room to conference room, so I didn’t have any help. He starts calling out the suggestions:<\/p>\n
“Nick!”
\n“Bob!”
\n“Chuck!”<\/p>\n
“Oh yeah!” I said. “Mark! How could I forget my own brother’s name?”<\/p>\n
Things were quiet for a while. We were thinking.<\/p>\n
It took us a while, but we came up with these names:
\nNeil
\nCarrie
\nMary
\nStu
\nPhil
\nBarry
\nNick
\nPat
\nBob
\nMark
\nDi
\nChip
\nChuck
\nFlo
\nMarch
\nCarol
\nChase
\nMike<\/p>\n
And, after some discussion, we included:
\nEddie
\nPeg
\nJimmy<\/p>\n
We were concerned that Peg and Eddie might be nouns, and Jimmy may be one of those names that became a verb because of the person who first performed that action. “To Jimmy” a lock…It may have become a verb because of the original “Jimmy” who invented that action upon the lock.<\/p>\n
ANYWAY.<\/p>\n
It was very amusing. And Neil was a great sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I met some new friends this weekend…Amy and Jamie. Amy just moved here from Virginia. She is aspiring to be…a singer? an Actress? whatever works. She was aspiring for a long time to live in LA. Now she is, so … Continue reading