Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1170, Naming Children.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1170.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue about the names that you give your children and perhaps a few that you don't want to give your children.
Let's get started.
So here is my short list.
A short list for what?
Baby names.
We have months to decide.
Don't you think we should wait?
No, I want to be prepared.
Here, take a look.
See what you think.
Ezekiel?
You want to name our child Ezekiel?
He'll be teased by every kid in school.
It's a family name.
I'm not naming my child Ezekiel.
His name would be Ezekiel Echelman.
That's a mouthful.
I also want to steer clear of alliterative names.
I've never liked them.
Not Alan Phillip, that's for sure.
Why not?
I thought we'd name the baby after my grandfather.
Alan is a nice first name, and Philip is a nice middle name.
His initials would be A-P-E, ape.
He would never live that down.
How about Michael?
You mean an alternate spelling for Michael?
People don't know how to pronounce a name with an odd spelling.
Well, are there any names you do like?
Albert Echelman Jr. has a nice ring to it.
As you say, we have months to decide.
Let's keep an open mind.
Huh.
Celeste begins our dialogue by saying to Albert, So here is my shortlist.
A shortlist.
S-H-O-R-T-L-I-S-T is a list of possibilities, usually a list of names for something that has been selected from a longer list.
So let's say that you are... going to hire someone for your company.
You're going to find a new employee and you interview 10 people.
You then decide that three of these people might be good employees.
Those three people then are on your short list.
The shortlist is the final list of possibilities from which you make a selection, from which you pick what you want.
In this case, it's a shortlist of names that Celeste and Albert are going to give their child.
Albert asks, however, a shortlist for what.
He doesn't know what Celeste is talking about, which is very common among husbands, I should add.
Celeste says, baby names.
Albert says, we have months to decide, meaning we don't have to decide this right now.
Don't you think we should wait, he asks.
Celeste says, no, I want to be prepared.
I want to be ready.
Here, take a look, she says, meaning look at it.
See what you think, she adds.
Albert immediately doesn't like one of the names on this shortlist.
He says, Ezekiel?
You want to name our child Ezekiel?
To name a child is to give the child a name.
The verb to name means to give someone a certain name.
Name can be a noun and a verb.
Albert doesn't seem to like the name Ezekiel.
He says, he'll be teased by every kid in school.
The he here is the baby.
To be teased, T-E-A-S-E-D, means to be made fun of.
The verb to tease means to make fun of someone to do something or say something wrong.
That will make other people laugh at a person or perhaps will make the other person not feel very good about himself.
That's often the result of teasing.
To tease however, is usually a verb that means not to be mean to someone, but simply to have fun with someone by making a joke about that person.
Children often tease other children, make fun of other children if the child is different in some way perhaps.
Albert is worried that his child will be teased by the other children because of his name.
It's not uncommon for children to tease other children by making fun of their names.
That happened in my family all the time.
My name is Jeffrey Lawrence, and if you put the initials, the first letters of those two words together, you get J-L.
Well, J-L, if you say it fast, sounds like the word jail, J-A-I-L.
So my brothers and sisters would tease me by saying, jail, you're going to go to jail.
You know, stupid things like that.
Don't worry, I'm over it.
It no longer bothers me.
The psychological counseling has taken care of it.
Anyway, back to our dialogue.
Celeste says it's a family name, meaning Ezekiel is a name that other people in Celeste's family have had.
People often name their children using names from their family that their grandfather had or that some other relative or member of the family has had.
Celeste says, Normally means to try to make someone happy who is otherwise upset or angry.
To do something that will stop the person from being angry.
Celeste perhaps thinks that her parents will be angry if she doesn't name her child after one of the members of Celeste's family.
To name after means to give someone the same name as someone else.
For example, my brother Frank or Francis, was named after my grandfather, who also had the name Francis.
To be named after means to give someone the same name as someone else.
It could be someone in your family.
It could be someone famous, someone that perhaps your parents liked, an actor or a poet or the postman.
The guy who delivers your mail.
Who knows?
Celeste says she was trying to appease her parents by giving the baby the family name of Ezekiel.
She says they've been suggesting a lot of family names.
They here means her parents.
We could call him by a nickname, maybe Zeke.
A nickname, N-I-C-K-N-A-M-E, is an informal name that you use instead of your full name.
Sometimes it's a shorter version of your full name.
Someone whose name is Christopher might be called Chris for short.
Or Jeffrey might be called Jeff.
Nicknames can also be unrelated to your name.
When I was in grade school, I was one of the shortest kids in my class, and so I was called Shorty S-H-O-R-T-Y.
I was also one of the dumbest kids in my class, so they could have called me something a lot worse, believe me.
Celeste is suggesting that, even though Ezekiel might not be a name that Albert likes, they could call the baby Zeke as a nickname, which sounds a lot better to them.
Albert, however, says, I'm not naming my child Ezekiel.
His name would be Ezekiel Ekelman.
Obviously, Albert and Celeste's last name is Ekelman.
That's a mouthful, Elbert says.
When someone says something is a mouthful M-O-U-T-H-F-U-L, he means it's a lot of things to say or it's difficult to say.
If a word is very long or difficult to say, something like anti-disestablishmentarianism.
No, I won't explain what that is.
That's a mouthful.
It's difficult to say.
Albert says, I also want to steer clear of alliterative names.
To steer S-T-E-E-R clear C-L-E-A-R of something means to avoid doing something or not to go near something.
If you and your friend don't agree about politics, you may steer clear of politics when you talk to each other.
You avoid that topic.
Elbert wants to steer clear of alliterative A-L-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E names.
Alliterative refers to words that begin with the same letter or sound.
So, Jeff Johnson is alliterative because both words begin with J, the J sound.
Ezekiel Echelman is alliterative because both words begin with the same sound.
Celeste says, okay, are there any names you like on my list?
Albert says, not Alan Phillip, that's for sure.
He selects another name, actually a first name and a middle name, that he doesn't like.
Celeste says, why not?
I thought we'd name the baby after my grandfather.
Again, to name after means to give him the same name as another person.
Alan is a nice first name, and Philip is a nice middle name.
My first name, as I mentioned, is Jeffrey.
Legally, that's the name that I have on my official documents.
My middle name is Lawrence.
Not everyone in the United States has a middle name.
A second name.
Many people just have a first name and a last name.
But I still think most people have middle names.
Celeste wants to give their baby the middle name of Philip.
But Albert says that if they give their child the name Alan Philip, his initials would be A-P-E.
Eight.
Initials are the first letters of words.
I mentioned how my initials of my first two names are J-L.
Well, the child, if he's given the name of Alan Phillip, would have the initials A-P-E, which spells out the word ape.
Ape is an animal similar to a monkey and perhaps not something that you would want to be called.
In fact, Albert says that the baby, the child, would never live that down.
To never live something down means that people will never forget about something that was bad or embarrassing about you.
Celeste then suggests a different name, which is Michael, M-I-K-O-L.
This is not the normal way of spelling Michael and Albert, I think for good reason.
Doesn't like that idea either.
He says, you mean an alternate spelling for Michael?
Alternate, A-L-T-E-R-N-A-T-E spelling would be a different way of spelling a name.
My name Jeffrey, can also be spelled G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y, in addition to J-E-F-F-R-E-Y, which is the way I spell it.
Albert says people don't know how to pronounce a name with an odd, O-D-D, spelling.
Odd means unusual or unexpected.
And it's usually used to describe something that's unusual in a bad way.
Nowadays, you see many odd spellings of names in English.
I suppose parents want to be different.
They want their child to be unique, to be unlike anyone else.
Or maybe the parents were just drinking very heavily when they decided on the name.
That's my personal theory.
Anyway, let's finish our dialogue today.
Celeste says, well, are there any names you do like?
Albert says, Albert Echelman Jr. has a nice ring to it.
If a boy has the same name as his father, the same first, middle and last names as his father, usually we add the word Jr at the end of the name so that you can Tell the difference or you know the difference between the father and the son.
My father's name was Patrick Dean McQuillan.
He named one of my brothers, Patrick Dean McQuillan, and so my brother's name is Patrick Dean McQuillan Jr.
When this happens, the father will often add the word senior to his name.
So my father became Patrick Dean McQuillan Sr.
Now you may be thinking, what happens if my brother names his male child, his boy, Sr.
Patrick Dean McQuillan, well, he becomes Patrick Dean McQuillan III.
And in fact, I have a nephew named Patrick Dean McQuillan III.
What happens if Patrick Dean McQuillan III names his child Patrick Dean McQuillan?
Well, he would become Patrick Dean McQuillan IV, and so on.
Now, my nephew did not name his child Patrick Dean McQuillan IV.
Strangely, he did name him Patrick McQuillan, but the middle name is different.
His middle name is Truman, which is a very unusual name.
It's actually the last name you may know of one of our American presidents, Harry Truman.
He was named after Harry Truman, that is to say, his middle name.
There is a tradition in the United States of giving someone a middle name.
That is normally a last name when you are naming them after someone.
One of the most famous Americans of the late 19th, early 20th centuries was George Washington Carver.
George Washington, of course, was the first president of the United States.
George Washington Carver's middle name was Washington, just as my great-nephew's middle name is Truman.
Okay, I know, the dialogue.
Let's finish.
Albert Echelman Jr., Albert says, has a nice ring, R-I-N-G, to it.
When you say something has a nice ring to it, you mean it sounds nice.
It sounds pleasant.
It sounds good to you.
Celeste, however, isn't very happy with Albert's solution here of naming the baby boy after himself.
Celeste says, as you say, we have months to decide.
Let's keep an open mind.
To keep an open mind means to not make a decision yet.
Albert isn't very happy with that.
He says he's not happy.
Now let's listen to the dialogue finally at a normal speed.
So, here is my short list.
A short list for what?
Baby names.
We have months to decide.
Don't you think we should wait?
No, I want to be prepared.
Here, take a look.
See what you think.
Ezekiel?
You want to name our child Ezekiel?
He'll be teased by every kid in school.
It's a family name.
I was trying to appease my parents.
They've been suggesting a lot of family names.
We could call him by a nickname.
Maybe Zeke.
I'm not naming my child Ezekiel.
His name would be Ezekiel Echelman.
That's a mouthful.
I also want to steer clear of alliterative names.
I've never liked them.
Okay.
Are there any names you like on my list?
Not Alan Philip, that's for sure.
I thought we named the baby after my grandfather.
Alan is a nice first name, and Philip is a nice middle name.
His initials would be A-P-E, ape.
He would never live that down.
How about Michael?
You mean an alternate spelling for Michael?
People don't know how to pronounce a name with an odd spelling.
Well, are there any names you do like?
Albert Echelman Jr. has a nice ring to it.
As you say, we have months to decide.
Let's keep an open mind.
Who's the greatest script writer in Los Angeles?
Well, I believe her initials are LT, And we want to thank her for writing our scripts here at ESL Podcast.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
