Naming The Next Generation

Welcome to the podcast where I invite you on a journey to explore meaning vulnerability and purpose through the lens of a life lived in geekdom I'm David Monteith and I am the Naked Geek.

Welcome back to the boudoir. You know what to do, pull up a chair, sit down, take the weight off and let's have a chat. See where we're at. Um, usually I'll start talking about a tipple that I've enjoyed, but I'm not going to this time. I'm just going to say that every live birth that we've had has been at home.

And one of the things that we loved about having a home birth. Once you have a birth, you can just pop open the champagne or Prosecco, wherever is your fave, your tipple of celebration right there. And then, you know, we're in the pool and that's where we had it. And basically, every child we've had, we've popped open a bottle of Prosecco.

We've kept the cork. And I'm curious, what is your celebration when you have a child? But, um, the reason that I've mentioned it today is because of what my subject is today. So, let's go.

I want to talk about naming the next generation, and I want to start by telling you about my daughter’s names. So, I've got four, three are living, and one died at birth. So, we have Alannah, and then there was Grace who died and then Kira and Alyssa. At the time of this recording, Alannah is 10, Grace would be7, Kira is six and Alyssa is three.

Um, now naming children is hard, and, what we did, we spend a lot of time, we spend a lot of time watching movies and TV shows and literally watching right to the end of the credits, trying to find inspiration, um, weirdly, do you know what? I still watch things right to the end. And I'm trying to see if I can make my whole family out of the credits I'll be watching and go, oh, there's an Alyssa, or there's an Alannah. Oh, there's a Dav… there's always a David cause it's a popular name, not common, popular. Anyway. So, mostly we pick the names because we liked the sound and the feel of them and the feeling that they gave us. When we thought about our, our children.

Alannah, however, means precious. Kira means glittery or sparkly. Alyssa means noble. Grace was named. And this was amazing because in the middle of these really painful contractions in this middle of this terrible experience where we knew our child was dead, my wife looked at me and said, I know this child is gone, but we, I intend to bring her into this world with all the grace and dignity she deserves and if it's a girl that should be her name. And that is something which has been hugely impactful on my psyche and my mind, the strength of this woman at this time and the name that our daughter has because of it. Now, however, I am also a geek and what I love about my wife is she enjoys the stuff. She doesn't have nearly the level of geekdom that I have going on, but she really enjoys, um, She really enjoys expressing and exploring that geekdom as well, even though it's kind of me, but you know, she's totally invested in it if it makes sense to her.

So, I, I, we, we wanted middle names for our daughters, and you know, where to even start with that. So, I suggested that the theme should be superheroes and she was down for that. So, you know, this is how, you know your partner’s a keeper. So anyway, I gave, came forward with suggestions and Siobhan would okay them. So, for the Alannah, our eldest, I wanted to call her middle name to be Mari, M A R I and Mari McCabe in DC comics is Vixen. Now she is the first female black character in DC to get her own comic. And she's hardcore. And really, I think, one of my problems here is that I don't think DC has handled her brilliantly. Because of who she is, because she has a totem that she can touch and get the powers of any animal that she envisages.

She could be a major powerhouse. She could be something really special if DC handled her right. And I don't think they ever really have. She appeared slightly different incarnation on TV and it was all right. I just think she could be real powerhouse up there with like storm from Marvel, although hopefully handled better in the movies than Storm was.

Anyway, let's move on to grace.

So, she was the next one. Now Grace made such an impression on our lives that I thought of Black Canary. Now, Black Canary is a character that is a kind of street-level detective. Um, the modern version has this Sonic scream that can just knock people over, knock people out, but she goes way, way, way back to the 1940s.Yes. Yeah. Yeah, 1947, to be precise and, um, you know, the modern Black Canary is the daughter of the original Black Canary and both of their names were Dinah. Um, so I suggested it. Look, this is a kick ass woman. That's been kicking ass for a long time and, uh, stood the test of time, um, and is a quality loved character in the DC continuity. My wife was up for it, so she became Grace Dinah

And then came Kira, and this is where things get, uh, interesting. Kira, we decided on Renee, Kira Renée Monteith. And one reason we went with Renée, is because she is the new Question. So, my favourite character Vick Sage, The Question died of cancer, and I'm going to talk about death and rebirth on another podcast. But for this point we just know he died of cancer. And before he did it, he passed the mantle on to Renee Montoya, who was an established DC character. She was a disgraced cop, and she needed to find herself. And that was, that was the original Question’s journey, finding himself. And so, she found herself, she took on his mantle and became the question, but not copy of him. She became, this was what was brilliant about it, she became a woman, a female version of the Question, but she was her own character. She did it her own way. She had a different feel to him. She wasn't just copying his path. She was forging her own. It was fantastic. It was fantastic that they did that. Now, Renee was kind of, you know, Vic Sage’s legacy, The Questions legacy and the real head….., the real mind…, what's the word, I'm not going to swear, what really messes with our heads about Kira was that if Grace hadn't died, Kira wouldn't exist and we don't want Grace to have died, but we're glad Kira exists. I mean, I can't even begin to tell you how that messes with our heads, but to a certain extent, yeah, Kira is Grace's legacy. And what I really loved about that was, that that kind of mirrored whole legacy thing. And so, she became Kira Renee Monteith.

And lastly, we have Alyssa now Alyssa managed to get two names, Lauraline and Kendra. Laureline is from a French comic called Valerian and Laureline, which was made into a movie, which is just called Valerian - sexist much, which was a great movie, completely destroyed by the completely lacklustre two main characters, because I'm not even going to say who they were, because I don't even want to get into it, but I mean, terrible terrible. It could be sorry. It was a great movie, but it just, yeah. Anyway, so you had that, Laureline and so that stuck. Keeping with the DC theme, we wanted another name. So, she was the only ones have two middle names. And that name was Kendra and Kendra is Hawkgirl. And I based that on a version of Hawkgirl from our, we call Earth 2.

We’re not going to go into that, what that means. But for those of you who know, you know, so she became Alyssa Laureline, Kendra Monteith. Now what really freaked me out was on the TV shows the CW, um, TV shows. There was a Hawkgirl played by a mixed-race woman, whose name was Kira Renee. Now we have no idea. I mean, What, what, what is that about?

I don't know, but that's the way it went.

So those were all girls, Vixen, Black Canary, The Question and Hawkgirl. And actually, when I looked at it, I thought this is interesting. So, we've chosen an African character, an Irish American character, a Latino character and an African American character, what a nice hodgepodge of heroes to blend in there.

So that was how we named the next generation. And I am so interested. How you have, for those of you who are parents, or if you own pets, how have you brought your geekdom into naming the next generation? And what, how have you imprinted your geekdom on the next generation, right from the start.

I mean, that's a bit mad, isn't it? Were you subtle, were you doing it like Nicholas cage, his sons called Kal El.

In the next episode, I'll be interviewing a friend of mine and you'll be able to see her name. You know how she came to name her children, which was quite an emotional journey actually, and I don’t take giving those names lightly, but I really, really, really want to know.

So, you can contact me@davidatthenakedgeek.co.uk. Or you can just join the Facebook group and post in there, links in the show notes. Yeah. Or just find me on social media. It's so easy to find me social media, and just let me know. Is there something about your kids that reflect your love of whatever property?

Let me know, let me know. Let me know. Thanks for joining me in the boudoir and the favour I'd like you to do me today is to join the Facebook group, which I mentioned earlier do that. It's just a place to discuss the issues that come up in each episode.

So, until next time I'm David Monteith, I’m The Naked Geek.