Mommy...I don't like my name

Being a Godparent, or in my case, a Godfather, I always felt that my duty was pretty much just being a person that a child can go to for spiritual guidance. As for me, I knew who my Godparents were, but when it came down to any kind of guidance, they weren’t the first ones on the list that I turned to. But, in the last two years my Godchildren have come to me numerous times to answer questions that their parents didn’t have the answers to. Their parents believed that any question they ask, a made up answer isn’t good enough. Especially when it came to science. It’s not that their parents are not loving enough or aren’t smart enough, but ever since their father has been working abroad in Sweden, mother has been taking care of a newborn, and since I’m the only one in the same time zone as them, these curious, intelligent five year old twin brother and sister have come to me with questions.

So last night, I got a phone call from Chantal, in which she left a voice message where she said, “Hi Uncle Chad…this is Chantal…can you call me back please, thank you.” Usually when she calls me up this girl cannot stop talking. So listening to her whispering voice and the length of the message led to there is something up. When I called back at around 8:30 p.m., I spoke to her mother to get the heads-up of why Chantal called me. It seems that Chantal hasn’t been herself in school and has been a little shy among her fellow classmates. Even with brother Chad around, her mother says that Chantal has been quiet. So yesterday afternoon, Chantal tells her mother, “Mommy…I don’t like my name.” Thrown a little off guard by the statement, Stacy didn’t know what to say. After ten seconds of silence, and then Stacy yelling for Chad, Chantal then goes to the phone and dials a phone number. As her brother comes strolling along and asks, “What are you doing Shanny?” “I’m calling Uncle Chad!” she exclaims. Stacy says to herself, if anyone who can have an answer to that statement would be Chad.

After Stacy gave me the reason behind her daughter’s call, I spoke to Chantal. Usually I get the “Hi Uncle!” followed by the “I did this today….” But this time, she came out and said, “Uncle Chad…I don’t like my name.” I asked her, “Why not?” Seems like the other girls in school have the ever popular traditional names like Elizabeth, Jennifer, and Brittany or the “transformed cool names” of Kayla, Kaitlyn, and Trisha. She felt that her name wasn’t cool enough and she wanted a new one. So I asked her, what name would she liked to be called. And she said, “Betsy.” I almost started laughing out loud, when I realized who was on the other line again, and made explained to well that Betsy is a fine name, but the name that her parents chose for her took a lot of thinking to have a significance. Since they were going to name their son, Chad, they wanted her to have at least the same three letters, so that no matter where they are, they will have each other and a special bond between each other; that the remaining four letters of her name represents her great grandparents: A for Ana, T for Timothy, N for Nancy, and L for Lawrence; and I mentioned to her that she also has a Baptismal or Christian name: Elizabeth. At that point, I heard her returning to her old self as she wanted to know more about these other people from which her name was generated.

As the call was coming to an end, I last mentioned to her that a name is a name and a number is just a number, but it’s who you are inside that really does matter(didn’t want to go into the what you do in life talk just yet) but if she preferred I’ll have a talk with her mom and dad about calling her Betsy or that I’d call her Elizabeth or Liz since that it is her Baptismal name.

She said, “No thank you, I LOVE my name!”