In an effort to make this whole blog thing a little more well-rounded, today's post is all about names. Well, just one name in particular. Ennis.
Onomastics is my
For a long time now our favorite name has been Moses and it still is. I see Moses as a middle ground between our divergent tastes: Joseph called Joe (his) and Hezekiah (mine). I tend to get tunnel vision when I think about names. If a name is hard to categorize it generally doesn't fall under my radar. So it makes sense that it took me so long to think about Ennis. And now that I have I'm kind of in love with him.
There are a LOT of reasons for us to love Ennis:
1. He's uncommon. I'm not one of those people who is against Top 10 names, but when you're working with a really common last name like Mike's then it becomes an issue. Mike is one of roughly 2,400 men in the U.S. alone with his same first and last name! Yes, I looked it up. As someone who shares her first and last name combo with only one or two distant cousins in the entire world, I think I'd prefer that for any future children. [Yes we have talked about hyphenating our surnames, but that's a topic for another post altogether].
According to the Social Security Administration, Ennis ranked in the Top 1000 off and on from 1881 (the first year records were kept) through 1943. Yes ladies and gentlemen, Ennis has been out of the Top 1000 for almost 70 years. And his highest ranking was only #586 in 1910. He's never even been in the Top 500! Less than 5 boys were named Ennis in 2010, though 6 received the spelling Enis. Uncommon? Double check.
2. He's a literary babe. Ennis Del Mar is the main protagonist in Annie Proulx's beautiful, haunting, short story Brokeback Mountain. Yes he's a tragic figure but I really don't think it's the same as naming your child Jocasta or Ophelia. A literary tie lends the name a sense of distinguish and pedigree. Plus, as a friend of mine aptly put it, this is one of the few books where the film adaptation didn't "rape" the original material.
3. He's a movie star. The character transitioned from the page to the big screen in the form of cowboy cool Heath Ledger. Mike is a screenwriter, so giving our child a name from a movie would be meaningful for us. Furthermore, it would be a tribute to both the now-deceased amazing actor Heath Ledger and the great filmmaker Ang Lee. It would also be a tribute to Bill Cosby's son Ennis who was tragically murdered in his prime.
4. He's got sentiment. Brokeback Mountain is a sentimental film for Mike and I. One reason is that we shared our first New Years Eve kiss as a couple when we saw the movie together in January 2006, since we hadn't been able to spend Dec.31st together. Partly because of this we chose the song "A Love that Will Never Grow Old" by Emmylou Harris as our wedding song. Also, the film is about two men whose same-sex relationship isn't accepted by the world around them. Both Mike and I consider ourselves champions of LGBT rights. This name is in some small part a nod to that.
5. He's a Muslim name AND an Arabic name. Sort of. More like Ennis is a valid variant transcription of the Arabic name Anas. I won't go there, but suffice it to say I would never saddle a child in America with a name spelled A-n-a-s. The parents of the 94 boys named Anas in 2010 clearly do not share my views.
Anyway, Anas was one of the Companions of Prophet Mohammed, pbuh. This makes Anas and all transcriptions of Anas, bonafide Muslim names. The name in Arabic means something along the lines of friendship or friendliness. The important thing is that Ennis is a name that will be recognizable and pronouncable to all of my Arabic speaking family. The same cannot be said for a name like Peregrine *sniffle*.
6. He's an Irish name. According to that bastion of truth, Wikipedia, Ennis is a place name in Ireland and is a mis/respelling of the word 'inis' meaning "island". I'm not wild about place names or surnames as first names so I think I'll stick with the meaning "friendship". I'm actually uncertain about just how much Irish heritage Mike or I have, but Irish names are all the rage. Thus, Ennis might be uncommon but he's still kind of on trend.
7. He's a family name. Again, sort of. This one is the biggest stretch. Nameberry lists Ennis as an Irish variant of the name Angus. Angus MacL---- was my great-great-great uncle on my mother's side.
As you can see, Ennis is quite the shapeshifter. He's really two names, for us anyways. I don't know how much it matters that he's not a big red flag screaming "I'm a Muslim!" like the name Mohammed. The bottom line is I think Ennis is a wearable name on the Islamic school and secular school playgrounds and he ages well.
Drawbacks? I worry that he doesn't have enough pizzaz in those two syllables. I tend to prefer longer, more romantic and masculine boys names. Names like Raphael, Tiberius, Solomon, Peregrine, Alisdair. You get the picture. Moreover, Ennis is not an Old Testament name. It's difficult to convey the connection I have with OT names, but I've been in love with so many of them for so long that I don't know if I could bring myself to not use one on a real child. I can be a bit biased and snobbish in my thinking that if a name isn't in one of the Good Books, then it kind of lacks validity as a name.
I subscribe to the idea that names of siblings should "match". Example of a mismatched sibling set: sisters called Esther and Mackenzie. The former is a clearly feminine OT name with centuries of use, while Mackenzie is a gender neutral nouveau surname in the Top 100 that has only ranked for the last 35 years. The point is, how does Ennis sound if his brother is Solomon and his sister is Zipporah/Sephora? Maybe I just need to learn more about the historical Anas and focus on that connection.
**DISCLAIMER** Discussion of baby names should NOT be extrapolated to mean that children (biological or otherwise) are on anyone's horizon. While we would be thrilled for God to bless us with any children that He might see fit in the future, that time is most likely not near.
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