|
|
 |
|
YOUR NAME  "This guy who won the Pulitzer Prize today--is his name Clem Lempnauer or Lem Lempensnauer? It's spelled both ways in my script. Anyway, can you imagine having a guy with that name on our newcast and having to hear me mispronounce it every freakin' night?" |
What's in a name? Well,
about 2/3 of the alphabet
By LEN KLEMPNAUER
or LEONARD KLEMPNAUER (if you prefer more formality)
or even LENNY KLEMPNAUER (if you're an old, old pal)
of TheColumnists.com
I like my name. Oh, there was a time in the past when I didn’t, starting in junior high and continuing into high school. It got really bad in high school.
Don’t you agree that Leonard Klempnauer is a bit much . . . real mouthful?
Less than a month into my junior year at Santa Cruz (Calif.) High School, I was named the sports editor of the weekly student newspaper, “The Trident.” Not that I particularly deserved the position. I was sitting in the beginning journalism class when our teacher asked, “Leonard, I understand you want to be a sportswriter someday. How would you like to be the sports editor of the school paper right now?”
Wow! Sports editor, and I hadn’t yet gone through one month of the intro class. I jumped at the opportunity. (Later I found out that I was named to the “prestigious” position by default. No one who was qualified for the Trident staff that year was interested in sports.)
After my first byline, “By Leonard Klempnauer,” appeared above my first story, I decided my name must be shortened. It stretched across the entire column. So I adopted “Len” as my unofficial first name.
I don’t think my parents thought highly of the change. After all, I was a Junior, that is, Leonard Klempnauer Jr., named after my father, and was obligated to carry on the name after him.
There was another downside to the change. I played basketball in high school, and the sports editor of the local daily blatt must have become confused. I thereafter was variously known as Lem Klempner or Clem Lempnauer or Klem Lempener. But I can’t fault him too much. He gave me my first professional job writing sports on weekends and summers when I went to college.
So, Len worked fine for me. It was a helluva lot better than my family nickname, which, for the first time, I’m exposing publicly in this piece. It’s “Lenny,” which only my relatives and very, very, very close contemporaries--those who knew me through my family as well as through school--dare mention in my presence.
Be forewarned!
But Lenny is a lot better than Junior, which my mother first thought of nicknaming me. She decided better of it because, as she confessed when I was an adult, “I didn’t want to shout out the back door, ‘Junior! Junior! It’s time for lunch’.”
Mothers yelled from the doorway for their kids to come home during the 1940s. If a kid were out of hearing distance of his own mother, another kid’s mother a house or two away would pick up the call and holler it from her doorway. My mother’s initial call could be relayed by mothers two or three times down the block before it caught the ears of the intended. The system worked extremely well. Better even than a cell phone. You can turn off a cell phone, but you can’t muffle a string of mothers screaming out your name from house to house.
When I was in school, I wished that my grandparents had given my father one of his brother’s names. The oldest was Henry. I could have been nicknamed “Hank.” Next came Edward. I could have been “Ed” or “Eddie.” Both are quite acceptable. Then came my dad, followed by Charles. “Chuck” or “Charlie” sounds perfectly fine to me. And, finally, Harold. How about “Hal” for a nickname?
No real nickname exists for Leonard, other than Lenny. Leo doesn’t work. Neither does Leon. Those are names distinctive unto themselves, although they’re both related to Leonard.
Len is a bit contrived, I admit. But few guys went by that name then. It may not have been unique, but it was unusual. I was the only Leonard, or Len, in my high school class. In my four years, there was only one other Leonard. He was a year behind me, but I don’t think he had a nickname.
But nowadays, when I make restaurant reservations, I have to spell it out: L-E-N. The restaurants always want to spell it L-Y-N or L-Y-N-N. Never my way ,but the way girls spell it. With a “y” in the middle.
I think some time after WWII, probably during the Baby Boomer generation, parents decided “Lyn” should be more than just an ending to a girl’s name, such as Carolyn or Marilyn or Sharilyn. Thus were birthed the Lyns and Lynns of this world. The second “n” was probably added to make it appear unique.
For sure, my name is a lot better than those guys who have a last name for a first name. They sound dopey. I’m unable to remember whether CNN’s Oprah-in-men’s-clothing is Cooper Anderson or Anderson Cooper. Guys who have a first name for a last name aren’t quite so bad off, e.g., John Wayne.
Whenever I run across my high school mates, usually at our local Costco, I can figure out when we first met. If I knew them before the start of my junior year of high school, they call me Leonard. If I met them after, they call me Len. A married couple from my Class of 1954 that my wife and I see often is divided. He calls me Leonard since I’ve known him since elementary school. She calls me Len because I didn’t come to know her until my junior year.
My wife knows me as Len. She does wince a bit when somebody calls me Leonard and cringes when someone other than family calls me Lenny. But I always assure her that I know that person really well or s/he wouldn’t dare.
My second favorite name of all time goes to a fellow by the name of Channing Manning. He was a Brit who owned a bookstore on Santa Cruz’s main street when I was a young man. I’d buy books at his shop just because I liked his name.
About a dozen years ago I finally started becoming proud of the name on my birth certificate after I got into genealogy and learned I am the only Leonard Klempnauer in existence. Only one Klempnauer emigrated from Germany to the U.S. There’s not even a Leonard Klempnauer in Germany. Even if there were, they’d spell it the German way: “Leonhard.”
Leonard Klempnauer is my favorite name
today. I’m unique!
©2006 by Len Klempnauer.
The cartoon is from IMSI'S MASTER CLIPS COLLECTION, 1895 Francisco
Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first
posted Oct. 9, 2006.
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Len Klempnauer. To send an email,
click here and don't forget to mention Len's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|