Five
weeks to go until the due date of my currently incubating grandson and new
cousin for LHG.
A nickname for him had eluded me,
and then father-to-be Peter came up with one: Teeny Rastafeeny. Those of you
who’ve never met Peter will be wondering why Rastafeeny. Those of you who have will know that he has a massive
set of thick dreadlocks (all his own) right down to his waist. Really. Waist
length. They’re quite something. LGH’s mummy, Giovanna, used to have them too,
back before LHG was even a ball of dividing cells. She got tired of trying to keep
them neat and cut them all off one day.
Now,
because we’re referring to Peter and K’s baby as Teeny Rastafeeny, I’ve started
to picture a tiny newborn with dreads! Can you imagine? It’s hard enough
getting a head out into the world without it being covered with a layer of
bulky, twisted hair! However, I shall go on picturing him as such until he
makes his appearance (not two weeks late like his cousin LHG, please.)
When he
is born, his curious nickname will be forgotten and he’ll have his new moniker
bestowed upon him.
But what?
Like most new parents, Peter and K have been trawling through the many ideas on
offer. The field’s wide open and they don’t feel obliged to stick with good old
traditional names, or with what’s currently popular.
Neither would
I have when Peter and Jack were born. If I’d had my way, they’d have been
called Dante and Rafaele, but Pa was having none of it. Peter was consequently
named after a recently departed grandfather. With Jack, we thought we were
resurrecting a name from the past that was normally a nickname for people
called John. How wrong were we? That year it was the top boy’s name, and for
many years after.
Peter and
K themselves came up with something they thought was unusual: Finn (Fin? Phinn?
Phin? Fyn? Phyn…?) They were wrong too. I even saw it on a T-shirt for sale
outside a seaside shop in Padstow – next to one with LHG’s Italian first name!
Nothing
stays unusual. As a child, I was the only Francesca I knew of – apart from the
actress Francesca Annis. Sometime in the 80s, the series Bread featured a baby with
my name. Boom! I was not amused. My Italian tutor at the time wanted to call
his new daughter Francesca. ‘Not likely’, said his wife, ‘there are already three
at nursery’ Ho hum.
So, five
weeks for Peter and K to think of an unusual name for Teeny Rastafeeny which won’t
become an immediate smash hit.
Good luck!
