Merry was called Merry because she was born on Christmas Day. Clearly her parents didn’t realize that the proper spelling of Mary had also some connection with Christmas. Merry spent her entire life, as a punishment for her parents’ lack of knowledge, saying, “No! That’s not how you spell it!”
Just over two years later, when her little brother was born, it was New Year’s Day, so he was named “Happy”. It was a providential name because when he grew up and began a career in looting he shot a couple of policemen and was known within close circles as “Trigger Happy”.
There was a third child in the family. He was called Roger; short for Roger Mortis. The parents thought it a huge joke because he was born on the very day that Grandma died. Spelling was not the parents’ greatest strength so “Rigor” was registered as “Roger”. Otherwise if he had been born on an ordinary day of the year they had in mind to call the baby Plain Jane if a girl, and Joe Blogs if a boy. And then Grandma stepped up to the plate. Roger had escaped from having a life lumbered with silliness.
Honestly, a number of people were relieved that the parents didn’t create further children. “I’m sure any uncreated children would be more than grateful that they never came into this world,” declared a neighbour, Ms. Stacey Meldrum. Stacey herself has a host of kids. I can only remember the names of three of them; Tabernacle, Vernacular, and Genuflection. After these three Stacey developed an interest in organic chemistry.
I dunno. I would have been kind of interested to read Joe Blogs blog.
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The world has certainly missed out.
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Kinda makes me wanna change my name.
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Iseult already calls you Joe, João-Maria already calls you Bob. I call you a lot of things under my breath. The world’s your oyster.
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Oysters are good, I think.
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LOL. They’re not overly useful at my age.
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Haha.
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Stacey’s other children were very close. The bond between the siblings could almost be described as covalent…
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Yes, but their carbon footprint was abominable.
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Very funny. Benny Hill has a thing where the old dying man explains to his sons how they got their names. “Filbert, we named you after a nut. Willard? We named you after a long argument”
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Ha! Yes I remember that Benny Hill!
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Good to find a connoisseur of the arts.
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For a long time of my life, I had too hated being named after ditties. Fortunately, as in your story, my procreators didn’t get another chance to name a boy.
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So is Uma from a song?
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It occurs in zillion devotional songs.
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One of my first girlfriends was named Merry. She was quite a gal and everyone liked to make…never mind, you can figure out the rest.
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The mind boggles!
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I’m surprised they didn’t pick an obvious one, like ‘Myrrh’ instead of ‘Merry.’
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Yes – Myrrh would’ve been gold (to be frank)
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Oooh. Bruce!
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