My middle name is Marie. Me and every third person and her cousin share that middle name.
Google claims that Marie is the most popular middle name for girls and has been for the past hundred years. Marie is French for "Mary", and has commonly been used to honor the Virgin Mary for hundreds of years. The name became even more popular in the 1970s after Elvis named his daughter Lisa Marie.
I wish I could say that I was named after Mary, the mother of Jesus, or even some old rock star’s daughter. I’d settle for a cousin of a great-aunt that my parents wanted to honor.
But I don’t have a reason why I was given the world’s most common middle name. My parents told me that they loved my first name and they just chose my middle name because it flowed nicely together. (Apparently Marie flows well with nearly every name on the planet.)
I’ve always liked my name fine, but secretly hated that my middle name was an afterthought, chosen out of lack of something better. I wish that my name had been selected for its powerful meaning, but Marie, as it turns out, means “sea of bitterness.”
I wish I’d been the namesake for my sweet grandma or feisty great-aunt, but there is not a Marie, Mary or Maria on my family tree.
Skip ahead a few decades and I found myself happily expecting my first child.
I was so excited to name this little nugget, but naming that kid was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not because I didn’t know what names I liked or wanted to use, but because, it turns out that it is custom to consult one’s partner before naming offspring.
And on names, we did not agree.
Sure, I threw out some family names that would have been super meaningful, but somehow they fell through the cracks of the name game and ultimately we settled on regular names. Names for the sake of something to call the kid, instead of something to carry with him. Something that mattered.
I’d like to say that we found a name that both honored a beloved family member and had a meaning that would create a man of character and strength, but we didn’t.
What we did find was a name that we both really liked and paired it with a middle name that … flowed.
When I said his whole entire name as a stream of words, they sounded good together. They rolled off the tongue well and they combined with our last name nicely. I could picture him being called this name as a baby and middle-schooler and grown-up man with a job.
The name worked. But it didn’t matter.
If, one day, my son comes to me and asks, “Mom, why did you choose to name me this?” I will only be able to shrug and say, “I don’t know … we just liked it — and it was the only name your father and I could agree on."
There will be no story behind the name. No grandfather that he can look up to. No meaning of strength.
Nowadays, I say my son’s name about a thousand times a day and rarely think about whether I made the right choice so many years ago. He and his name are synonymous and it’s hard to separate one from the other or imagine calling him by anything else.
But occasionally, when a friend names her newborn to honor her mother’s maiden family heritage, or when a cousin names her rainbow baby Ayah because it mean “miracle,” I wish I’d prioritized a bit differently in naming my kids.
I wish I’d given my kids the gift of a name that held significance.
