Just Call Me Greg

            My name in English is Gregory. My name in Hebrew is (Hadad). Everybody calls me Greg but my mother. She has never called me Greg and I don’t think she ever will, she always calls me Greg. She probably doesn’t call me Greg because it keeps me as a child in her eye. My name fits my personality very well. I imagine a Greg as a pleasant, to himself kind of guy. I hate to admit it, but it also makes me think of a slight nerd. Well, hey, that’s sort of me. Kind of. Um…let’s move on.

            My name is a great plateau. Even, steady, and with a beautiful horizon. Some say the name Gregory is “like a rock”. This makes me feel like a Dodge™ truck. Although, ironically my initials are GMC, a major Dodge competitor. The “ory” in “Gregory” is a little added extra. It is like a prairie dog roaming freely among this great plateau with a heavenly sunset.

(Hadad) means great ruler or king that everyone looks up to. This is all fine and dandy, but I don’t know if that really fits me very well. I am Jewish. In Jewish tradition, my name is supposed to be in honor of someone. That person cannot be alive at the time of my baby naming. The baby naming in Judaism is called a bris and is held on the eighth day after the child is born. At the bris there is a baby naming service and some more complicated ceremonies that are better left unsaid.

Anyway, I was named after my maternal great-grandmother. Her name was Hudle Fischer. Now, that might sound a little funny, but you have to remember what Jewish names were a while back on the timeline. Hudle was a marvelous person, so I hear. She traveled from Europe with a child. She made a living in the United States, and after five years decided that she had gone long enough without her husband. Her husband was leaving for the USA earlier to get a job and then Hudle and the child would meet him there as planned. Although they both made it to the US okay, not everything was fine and dandy. There were some mix-ups, and they don’t see each other. Anyway, five years go by and Hudle puts an ad in the newspaper for him. He saw it and in a few days they were living happily together again. After that, they had four other children, one of them being my grandmother. Everyone loved and respected Hudle, and I hope it will be the same way with me when I have children and grandchildren.

To be named after Hudle I am supposed to have a name that begins with “H” or sounds like Hudle. My parents weren’t pleased with any of those, so they tried her middle name, which began with “I”. They weren’t pleased with any of those either, so they chose to go closer to “H”, but the other way, to “G”. My mom just couldn’t get enough of the name Gregory.

My name could have been Max. That’s what my dad wanted me to be because it’s my great-grandpa’s name on my dad’s side. Eventually, after hours and days, and weeks, and probably months of debating between my mother and father, they decided to make my middle name Max.

I sometimes wonder what life would be like if I was Max. Would I be different? Would I have a different personality? If I were Max, would people treat me different? Would I still be the blissful plateau? Or would I be a day at the beach? How about a tropical island…or the middle of New York.

At any rate, that is how my name became Gregory Max Cornell. For now, you can just call me Greg.