What's in a Name?

Anyone who knows me acknowledges that I am a bit quirky. When you meet others who share some of your quirks, you know that they’ll be your friends for a long time. To my delight, when Robin and I were working and teaching together (“back in the day”), we both discovered that we share an affinity for naming inanimate objects.

Ok--this news may not be so weird. But to me, you can’t just assign names to objects. Things have names. For example, my first car was named Alexander. He was cool and classy but had an old school finesse about him (manual shift--*sigh*). I couldn’t pinpoint his name immediately, but once my friend Matt suggested it, it felt right. He was an Alexander. (That whole process took about a week.) My current car is a year younger than Alexander was. I purchased it when Alexander was rear-ended and deemed “beyond repair” by the powers that be. The new car looks similar--it’s the same make and model, but a different color, and it’s an automatic car with a V6 engine. Yup--he’s an eager little bugger. Step on the gas and it’s like taking a puppy out to play. He revs up and is off to the races. Within the first hour that I actually owned the car, I knew his name was Fletcher. It just fit.

So, what does this have to with New Zealand?

Since Robin and I were on the “Great Kiwi Road Trip,” we spent a chunk of time maneuvering through parts unknown. We used some of our handy map-reading skills to find destinations, but we relied heavily upon our Navman to help us negotiate the twisted roads and pinpoint our locations. A Navman is a GPS unit, like a Garmin or a TomTom. Our Navman had a Kiwi accent and a saucy little attitude to match. The cool female voice was colored with a little disdain every time she gave us a direction, as though she were sneering from her lofty perch at the fact that we needed the help of a GPS.

The first day we ventured away from Tauranga, we called her “Beatrice,” thinking that a suitable name for the “personality” she seemed to have. MISTAKE. “Beatrice” wasn’t particularly keen on this misnomer, and gave us one or two faulty directions. (Sometimes she just “forgot” to provide a turn.) On the second day of our road trip, Robin suddenly figured out our Navman’s real name--one that fit her snarky condescension perfectly: “Bernice.”

Ironically, once we started to refer to her as “Bernice,” our Navman started playing a bit nicer. Was she ever perfectly sweet? I wish I could say “yes!” but her personality always lent a bit of sarcasm and condescension. Some of my favorite directions from her were utterances such as, “In 3 kilometers, continue straight” on the same road we’d been driving for 50 kilometers.

(Incidentally, we did name the car too. That was part of our rainy day “girl talk”* as we attempted a visit to the Coromandel. He was quite obviously a “Gus.” He huffed and puffed as we climbed hills, squealed his gears on the gentlest of turns, and ate gas like there was no tomorrow.)

Gus, with Robin

(Bernice was “too cool” to have her photo taken.)

*Yes, I realize that naming vehicles is not usually a part of “girl talk,” but I have already acknowledged that I am admittedly not your average gal. I send my Christmas cards in July, for goodness sakes!