Now and then I watch reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” A recent show was mostly about whether a mother-in-law should be called “mom.” The show’s two mothers-in-law got into a big battle over it.
That reminded me of some of the interesting things families do with names.
Take my mother-in-law, who was born in 1898 in San Francisco. That was the year the United States fought to free Cuba and the Philippine Islands from Spanish rule.
The hero of the war was George Dewey, best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay. Dewey was the first person in American history to be named an admiral in the U.S. Navy. Male babies were often named in his honor.
Not wanting to name a girl Dewey, my mother-in-law’s parents named her Manila, with a middle name of Philippines.
Her husband — my father-in-law, Earl — didn’t call her Manila. He settled for Nell. I didn’t like calling her Nell or Manila. I simply didn’t call her anything, and she didn’t seem to mind. We were the best of friends all the years I knew her, and she didn’t call me anything either.
(Over the years, my mother-in-law, checking newspapers and magazines, found 26 other women named Manila, all about her age, but none with the middle name of Philippines. She corresponded with some of them.)
On my mother’s side of the family, my grandfather was a jokester who taught me as a child to call my grandmother “Mocker.” I did, and it was adopted by other members of the family. No one knew why she was Mocker or what it meant. My grandfather, after starting it all, called her “Jose,” her given name being Josephine.
My parents named me Elmer Theodore, Elmer after an uncle and Theodore for Teddy Roosevelt, whom my dad admired. No one called me Elmer because it caused confusion when my Uncle Elmer was around, so I became Teddy as a child and later, Ted.
When our son was born, we wanted to call him Ted without burdening him with becoming a “Junior” so we added a second “d” and he became Tedd. Big mistake.
Some people assumed “Tedd” was a typo and simply corrected it for us by removing one of the d’s. Others called him Junior to distinguish between the two of us. When we’re together, we both answer when someone calls out “Ted.”
In the “Everybody Loves Raymond” show, the debate over what to call a mother-in-law was so contentious that they just went back to not calling them anything, which may be the best plan of all.
Contact Ted at Tblanenship218@gmail.com.
