I needed a new avatar! I required another personality...At least for the sake of a name at the bottom of my poem. The problem being that it was about work and a job, of which I had only had the limited experience of an internship....I was afraid that anyone who read it and who knew me would not take the poem seriously! And so, the search for my alter ego began.
Settling on the first name for my doppelganger wasn't too hard a task....it had to be, and could ONLY be "Claire". It was French, it was light, it was one syllable long, it wasn't unbelievable, and most importantly, I was in love with it!
The second name left me with a bit of a problem though......I tried going all Irish and taking on the name Connolly.....but Claire Connolly....?....hmmm...A bit too stylish...and maybe a tad bit corny too!
Claire Daniels....? Sounded a bit too much like some author I had already read....a bit too familiar!
Claire Paul? Claire Leonard? Claire James? Claire Kumar? Claire Clandestine? Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire!!!!
For days I drove friends mad! Vote on this set of names. Rank these in your order of preference. Compare this to that. Choose. Choose. Choose.
And as with any survey, I got very contradictory results, and in some cases, a funny look and an exclamation, "You've GOT to be joking!"
And then, for some inexplicable reason, when I was lying in bed one night, about to drop off to sleep, I remembered a baby I knew in church when I was a kid....his name was natty ('a' pronounced as in aligator, and 'ty' as 'tea')...he refused to eat his fruits, and just to show him that all good children ate their fruit, his mother had called me and fed me custard apple...and then I knew I had it!! Nati...short for Nathaniel! Perfecto!
Claire Nathaniel!
You problem wonder why I got so excited about this...or even bothered mentioning that inane and pointless story of the fruit. :-)
I wouldn't blame you. I don't know either. But I suppose that's what parents feel when naming their children....they name them for the weirdest reasons, after the strangest people....or the most ordinary commonplace ones....But they just know that THIS is the name for THIS baby. And similarly, Claire Nathaniel, and no other name, could be me.
Nathaniel is a Hebrew name. It means "God has given". As a bit of trivia, it was the other name of Bartholomew, one of the 12 apostles. Claire is French, and means "light" or "bright" or "shining" or "clear". It also means "famous".
Given the importance which I give to the meaning of names, I now think it symbolic and hopeful, even though I didn't realize it at the time of adopting this name, that Claire Nathaniel means "God has given light".
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the rather off-beat tale of the manner in which Claire Nathaniel, my alter ego, the name at the end of some of my poems, was born.
Grateful.
6 years ago
