Name that kid!

I will admit that when Steph was pregnant and we were bandying about names for our prospective child, I looked up the top ten snow and skateboarders in North America.  I was trying to fulfill some predetermined destiny that by giving a child a cool name, he or she will aspire to satisfy the coolness of that name either by a) be somehow be naturally graced with the talents of world class skate/snowboarder and fulfill the role they were always meant to be or b) not give a shit about anything, which, as we all know, is the first step to coolness.

Sidenote:  I am 42 year old man still mildly obsessed with the notion of cool, knowing all too well that this obsession immediately pegs me off the perch of cool.

Now to be fair, the names I researched did not all come back Bode (who I know is a skier, thanks assface) they were quite typical – as an example here is a snowboarder list from 2007.

Craig Kelly – USA
Nicholas Muller – Austria
Terje Haakonsen – Norwegian
Travis Rice – USA
David Benedek – Germany
Shaun White – USA
Romain De Marchi – Swiss
Jeremy Jones (either of them) – USA
JF Pelchat – Canadian
Shaun Palmer – USA

And a random skateboard god list from 2000-2010

Tony Hawk

Rodeny Mullen

Danny Way

Ryan Sheckler

Rob Dyrdek

Bob Burnquist

Daewon Song

Paul Rodriguez

Elissa Steamer

Jamie Thomas

As you will note, none of these first names really stand out as anything special.   Some sound cool because of the last name e.g. Tony Hawk or Travis Rice or Danny Way but nothing too aloof and cigarettey as I was seeking when trying to find a name for my eventual child.

I liked Brody a lot, basically because of Mall Rats and Bennett was in play for awhile as were some other variations of typical names that proved I was trying to hard to aptly name my child.  Our child naming strategy consisted of both Steph and I submitting a list of five names a week leading up to the birth and comparing notes.  Names you really liked stayed on the list, even if the partner abhorred them, giving you the opportunity to sell in the moniker over a period of time.  Which of course never worked.  I always loved the name Kate, but Steph did not like Katherine or Catherine and Katherine Graham was the publisher of the Washington Post so, basically taken, so it was quickly smudged off the list.

Of course the name that kept coming back on Steph’s list was Hudson.  Now most of you know that Hudson is small, predominantly English speaking town, 60 kilometres west of downtown Montreal.  My wife spent her formative 10-17 years there before escaping to Ryerson to begin her illustrious and career as a housewife and sex kitten to her husband Jason – wait wait – that’s another blog.  Anyway, I immediately did not like the idea of our child being named after the town she grew up.  It was too cute, as is the town ironically, and toting Hudson around while visiting her family and friends in Hudson (perhaps wrapped in Hudson Bay blanket) was almost as bad as wrapping a jaundiced baby in a yellow blanket and inviting the neighbours over to see the “yellow baby”.  Note the word almost mother.   But with an awesome selling job, Hudson became the name of choice if we had a boy, which of course we did, almost nine and half years ago.  Funny I do not know the female name we landed on as it seems like so long ago.

Now as any parent will tell you after any degree of time it is difficult to think of their child with any other name.  Hudson fits Hudson whatever that means and Tasman fits Tasman.  For those that do not know, Tasman is named after the Tasman Sea or, more appropriately, Abel Tasman the Dutch explorer who founded New Zealand where Steph, Hudson and I spent significant time in 2005-2006.  If we had a girl she would have been named Tasman also, but please don’t tell Tasman that.

I like the origin of both my son’s names.  They are both strong and unique and with their geographical roots, they escape the rolling of the eyes the parents occasionally offer who named their children more atavistically.

Hud and Taz also roll off the tongue when yelling at them to go to bed or get me another freaking scotch.

And both are pretty cool kids to say the least.