It's one I read as a child and have always remembered. The story is about a boy in China who falls into a well. I don't remember the story at all other than the name of the boy. I even googled it to make sure there WAS such a story and it was not just a figment of my imagination.
According to my research on the internet this afternoon the the story does exist and the point of the story is as follows:"If a mother loves her son very very VERY much... she shouldn't give him a long name like "Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sarimbo Hari Kari Bushkie Perry Pem Do Hai Kai Pom Pom Nikki No Meeno Dom Barako" ...which is SURE to get him stuck in a well because it takes so long to say it. INSTEAD, she should give him a very SHORT name... like "Tikki"... that you can say very quickly."
The reason I have been thinking of this story recently is because the adoption of our boys is supposedly happening in the next 3 months. We have to decide what names we will adopt them as and we have long debated names. It's a good thing we had more than nine months to do this or we would have been in a real pickle! We both have names in our families which we would like the boys to carry. I seriously doubt we will be having more children, even though we would like to. So we have to get all the names from both our families onto these two unfortunate souls. There are names in our families like Willis and Percival and we simply have not been able to agree on what we should do. Our choices were further complicated by the fact that the children arrived with names and we don't really want to change the names they were given already, but we don't want to saddle them with 27 names.
What if they have ADD? Will they fail kindergarten because they have to write names out that go on for days? I remember Lady Diana at her wedding to Prince Charles messing up all his names. How embarrassing.
To add more confusion to the whole name mess my partner and I have both kept our maiden names. So what name do we give to the boys as a surname? In an attempt to put some of the confusion to rest (Drum roll please) This week we legally changed our names and we now have a blended last name.
It's true.
We have become hyphenated lesbians. I feel a little like Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sarimbo Hari Kari Bushkie Perry Pem Do Hai Kai Pom Pom Nikki No Meeno Dom Barako.
So now that the saga of the last name is resolved we have to decide what we will do for first names for the boys. Poor kids are saddled with a mouthful of a last name so we are going to have to be creative on their first names. Maybe Wil and Per.
2 comments:
I used to work with a fella whose last name was Dalley. He married a woman whose last name was Kinison. They kept their own names ... until their son came. What they did was blend their names so their last names is now Kinley. I thought it was really cool.
Our adopted son came home from Korea at 10 months old...We named him Isaac and took his Korean first & middle name and hyphenated them into one middle name now. We wanted to hold onto that part of him and never let it go.
I think blended last names are awesome...reflects your bond & commitment to each other.
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