Dignity

May 17, 2020

Pentwater, Michigan

     For a number of years I have observed a phenomenon for which, at this point, I can think of no clever descriptive name.  It often occurs on highway signs dedicating particular stretches of roadway to the memory of some person--sometimes a public official like a mayor, or equally often a fallen police officer.  Another place it happens, even more often, is in newspaper obituaries.  What is this phenomenon? you ask.  It's when a person's nickname is put in parentheses or quotation marks after his name, for instance, "William (Bill) Anderson," or "The Officer Gerald 'Jerry' Bevilaqua Memorial Interchange."  These aren't real names I've seen, but you get the idea.  Occasionally in obituaries the nickname is of an affectionate grandfatherly or grandmotherly type, e.g., "Miriam (Nana) Feldman," but usually it's just the regular nickname for that person's first name.

     You might be asking, "Well, what's wrong with that?"  If so, I'm glad you asked, and I'll tell you.  First of all, what is so difficult about figuring out that a person we all called Bill might really be named William?  Is that so counter-intuitive that you have to put "Bill" after the name William?  I think not.  Some people call me Pete, and some call me Peter, and some probably call me other things, but when my obituary is published I require only one first name to be used, namely, the one I was given when I was born.  Those who knew me as Pete will figure it out with no problem at all.  Now, if your name is Prajeet Singh, but the people who came into your 7-Eleven all knew you as Bobby, I can understand using the nickname in the obit.  But not Michael "Mike" Sullivan, or Edward "Eddie" Lopez, or Arthur "Art" Johnson.  That's just silly.  But look at your local newspaper obituaries and I guarantee you'll see it every day.  I do look at the obituaries daily, in part to be sure my own name doesn't appear there, in some Twilight Zone-ish way, and also to be sure that most people in the listings are still older than me.

     Not using nicknames needlessly is a matter of dignity, as far as I'm concerned, at both ends.  How stupid do people think we are if we can't recognize a person's obituary when their full name is spelled out, without having to have their nickname added for good measure?  Aren't pretty much all Jimmys, Bobs, and Maggies really Jameses, Roberts, and Margarets?  And if we knew Elizabeth as Betty, it should come as no surprise to us that her full given name is used in her death notice.  What good does it do anyone to put nicknames in an obituary or on a memorial road sign?   Does it make the person less dead, somehow, or more human?  Does it warm the now-cold corpse?  Nicknames and diminutives are friendly familiar things people call one another among themselves, when they're living, whether on the playground, or playing pool or watching the game or maybe even for that person's entire life, but they are not the person's full name, usually, and everybody knows or should know that.  They don't convey the full dignity of your name, or the full seriousness of your death.  When it comes time to put your name on a highway sign honoring you for your greatness, or sacrifice, or on a notice observing your passing, let the full gravitas of your given name, or at least the name you have chosen for yourself, be the means by which you are designated.  (If you're Kirk Douglas, you might want to be known as Kirk Douglas, not as Issur Danielovich, for instance.)

     God help you if you were given a stupid name out of the gate, like Moon Unit or Dweezil or Rumer or Scout.  That was just smirking self-centeredness on your parents' part.  I can't help you there, and I can only hope they didn't humiliate you in other ways in an attempt to show how clever they thought they were.  Your dignity was stolen at birth.  There are parts of the country where diminutives are given names, particularly down south.  Billy Bob Thornton, who's from Arkansas, was apparently born William Robert Thornton, and chooses to be called Billy Bob.  Okay, good for him.  But many people in the rural parts of the country are given names like Billy Bob and Johnny and Scooter and Jimmy by their mamas and daddies.  This is due to what I like to call the phenomenon of diminished expectations.  Some people are born so low and to such ignorant people that from their very births they are expected to grow up to be just Aw Shucks good old boys.  In fact the operative word there is "boys."  For many people nicknames, as common as they are, fade away in adulthood as people become more mature, or remain strictly within families or among friends.  But in some parts of the country people are expected to be, and to behave like, boys throughout their lives.  With respect to African Americans, it's more of an order than a suggestion or expectation.  There the imposition of diminutive nicknames from birth has a more sinister side than the mere lack of ambition for the child on the part of the parent: it has been a way of keeping the man a boy for life.  If your given name is Willie, who will be surprised if you fail to soar to great heights, and instead remain somebody's boy--their janitor, their bellhop, their servant?  Louis Daniel Armstrong, the immortal cornet player and jazz singer, referred to himself as Louis (pronounced Lewis), not Louie, I think for very good and obvious reasons.  However, practically no one else did.  He once said, "All white folks call me Louie."  Armstrong was a man who valued his dignity, and who struggled every day of his life with the question he asked in one of his own songs, "What did I do to be so black and blue?"  If your given name bespeaks some measure of dignity or elevation--Charles, Lamont, Marcellus--or even if it's sort of made up, like LeBron, or Draymond, or Kentavious, then the world may take you seriously, even if you weren't born a Winthorp, with a silver spoon in your mouth. 

     Dignity.  It's okay to stand up at the funeral and say, "You know, Jimmy was always there for me," but for Christ's sake put the name James on the man's tombstone.  That was one of the few things I didn't care for about Jimmy Carter, the president.  He wanted to be inaugurated as "Jimmy," even though his given name was James Earl Carter, Jr.  (I'm pretty sure they didn't let that happen.)  Why would he want such a thing?  Because it would make him look more humble and folksy than a Georgia farmer already is?  All this desire did was to start him off behind the eight ball of executive dignity, and it went pretty much downhill from there.  See, you can give away your dignity, in large pieces or small ones, but when you do it's very difficult to reclaim it.  After the patrician George Herbert Walker Bush projectile vomited at the dinner table in Japan, a piece of his dignity stayed on the floor with the puke, never to be reclaimed.  Every time Gerald Ford stumbled getting off his plane, a little bit of dignity remained on the tarmac.  The current president had squandered whatever dignity he ever had many years before he became the cross between Mussolini and a windup monkey that he is today.

     Dignity.  Sometimes it's all you have left when life is over.  Keep it intact.