I wonder how many people dislike their name? An Internet search claims 16% of the population of the United States wish they had been given a different name. I do know some who have changed their name when the were old enough to do so. As a child I would have happily done just that.
As a child I was not happy with my name. I hated it. Everyone I knew with that name was a girl. Believe me, an eight-year-old boy in 1965 did not want a girl’s name.
I was the third child so the novelty of naming a kid was over. I was “baby boy” when I came home from the hospital. I was also the middle child. They didn’t even bother to give me a middle name. They had things going on. My mom had two kids already, which I imagine my grandma was watching while she was in the hospital. By the way, I was a cheap child. My mom saved the hospital bill when I was born. It was $98.00.
My dad had just built a new hog barn and was farrowing the group of sows the night I was born. He told me it was a hot July and the temperature was about 100 degrees in the farrowing barn that night.
My mom said I was kind of a hefty baby and already had curly hair when I was born. The nurses nick-named me Gorgeous George after a pro wrestler in the 1950’s. George Raymond Wagner (Gorgeous George), was quite a celebrity and turned pro wrestling into the showmanship sport it has become today. Muhammed Ali patterned his flamboyant boxing ring antics after Gorgeous George.
A few days after I came home from the hospital I still was “baby boy”. It was time for decisions. Years ago, my dad told me how I got my name. It came to him as he read the newspaper while eating breakfast one morning.
There was a comic strip in the newspaper called “Terry and the Pirates.” It was very popular and was in syndication from 1934 to 1973. It was created by Milton Caniff about an adventurous American boy, Terry Lee, who went on adventures in the far east starting with searching for a lost gold mine in China. With the outbreak of World War 2, he joined the United States Army as a pilot. Milton Caniff was very patriotic and the series then became almost exclusively about World War II with much action centering on a U.S. Army base in China. He even provided a spin off for the Stars & Stripes military newspaper. The cartoon series did win the first cartoonist of the year award in 1946 from the National Cartoonist Society.
So, it seems I was named after a cartoon character. My parents would call me Terry Lee, but the middle name was never official. I would have rather been just Lee. I guess it could have been worse. I have got used to it as time passed. Funny how when one gets older, what is important changes.
