My soon-to-be-born sobrino is going to be named Ascher. My mother asked me about the name today.
“Se va llamar como cenicero?”
“No mom,” I explained. “That’s ash-tray. El se va llamar Ash-er.”
Despite my best attempt to play “words that sound like” in order to give her some frame of reference for the name, she still made me promise to test her every day until the child is born. She had never heard the name Ascher and she doesn’t want to be embarrassed and call him ashtray.
I can’t quite decide on the most amusing element of this story:
- The idea that my mom thinks my sister would name her kid after an ashtray;
- The idea that my mom is so insecure about her bearings that she thinks she’ll slip and call her only grandson “ashtray”; or
- Knowing that for the next few weeks my mom’s going to be trying out excuses for not using the child’s name (she’s already asked how long I think calling him “baby” will work).
© Laura Genao 2007
The next time you see my family, you need to give my mom a hard time about her inability to remember certain people’s names. She can repeat them 50 times a day and still not remember. Jorge. Richelle. Brent. All BIG problems for my mom. At least your mom has the excuse that Ascher *is* an unusual name.
Heh. My grandparents have issues with pronouncing some of their bisnietos’ names. For instance, my cousin’s son, De’Shaun is sometimes called Chon.
This all reminds me of my cousin Vanny’s response when she learned that her mom wanted to name her soon-to-born sister Valerie. She said, “Noooo! Not Battery!”