Naming Names

Let it be known, I'm something of an odd duck.

It's something I've come to accept as well as I imagine I ever will, and only the fact that pointed reminders of it bother me still makes it relevant.

And one of the least overt signs of this is that I LOVE naming my stuff.

My first car, a 1988 Toyota Corolla which served my family faithfully from 1988 up until about 2005, received the sobriquet, "Cross-Eyed Mary" after I'd been driving her less than a year.

My current automobile, a '97 Saturn SC, received its name on day seven of my drive from Alaska to Indiana (bad move, that). As I sat in a motel in Minnesota, it came to me.

The Reverend Otis P. Jivefunk, Minister of Culture.

It had clearly been a long haul.

Sometimes, the names are based upon whimsy, sometimes upon what an object is. I own a Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle manufactured in 1941, with the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union stamped on the receiver. I named the grand old shoulder cannon "Uncle Vanya," in honor of another angry old Russian. It kicks like a mule, the muzzle flash is visible from space, and it has a steel plate on the rifle butt rather than something sane, like padding, but the old man fires true and hits like a freight train. Who could ask for more?

Then there are things named after deeds I have done with them.

Frogchopper, my Cold Steel Gurkha machete, labored namelessly for over a year before the Great Summer Bug-Out. On that trip, the bullfrogs were making a nuisance of themselves untila good friend of mine went after them with his .22. Rather than simply waste them, I took the frogs over to a sectioned log and chopped them in half so we could eat the legs and use the front halves as catfish bait. Hence, Frogchopper.

In the midst of all of this, I find the things that I don't name stand out more than somewhat.

Neither of my pistols has a name of any kind. Nor do my many secondary knives. My computer has no name (although my old latop, Mimir, certainly did). My straight razor has no name.

I've come to believe that the more "commonplace" I see an item as being, the less likely it is to receive a title.

Although that still makes the pistols odder than somewhat...