What's In A Name?

There are some names that no matter how goodlooking the person on the other end of it, you just cannot imagine a passionate love scene with them. I once went on a date on a date with a dude name Horace. Except he didn't pronounce it Horaaace like we do in the islands. No, that would've been too easy. His pronunciation was Horis, said harsh and quickly like you were hacking up phlegm. Once I got the phlegm image in my mind, the date was all downhill from there. By the time he told me he was "violently opposed" to adoption, I had already checked out, convinced that his anti-adoption drivel was somehow connected to his wack-ass name.

Sounds superficial? Maybe. But can you picture yourself locked in a hot embrace with a thirty-something Mortimer or Ethel? Probably not. And it's not just old names either. Tell me you don't think of Rocky every time you hear the name Adriene; or Emmanuel Lewis when you hear Webster (how can you still have sex after Webster's angelic face pops into your head?) or Terry McMillan and her gay husband when you hear Stella (personally, I think of Taye Diggs and that horrid accent, but that may just be me).

The worst is the name Oliver. The first image that comes to mind for me is a pale-faced Oliver (Twist) holding out his bowl and saying, "Please sir, may I have some more?" and the overweight man getting red in the face and bellowing, "More?! More?!" And boxing poor Oliver's ears. The second image is the Jamaican Oliver (Samuel) and his, er, flamboyant ways. I don't know which is more disturbing, but neither gets me in the mood.

One of my guy friends dated a woman with his mother's name for about two years. Akward? A little. Creepy? Most definitely. I felt sure that if they'd gotten married, there'd have been a therapist and a couch in their future. I couldn't date a dude with the same name as my dad. But I have dated a dude with my last name when I lived in JA, a far more ballsy move, considering my dad's, er, charm.

The last guy I dated seriously before the current BF (whom I call by his last name because the first name is not so wonderful) actually lied about his name. I didn't find out until 4 months in, and then only by accident.

I hate a horrid name, but I hate a liar even more. At least you can change a bad name...