The Tale of Why My Son is Named After a Bag of Cement

Here he is impersonating a bag of cement, 12 hours old.

Let me preface this by saying that Mike and my marriage is marked primarily by our intellectual compatibility. We have been best friends for sixteen years and we have spent most of that time in long, caffeine fueled conversations about the nature of everything. We can talk any subject to death with delight, or, if we get off on the wrong foot, we can fight like two badgers protecting the same hole.

So when Mike and I discovered that my youngest son was on the way, there was some consternation over what we should name him.

My older two children, from my former marriage, have nice Celtic names, which had been chosen on the rationale that, since they would automatically carry their father's last name, and hence his ethnic brand, mine should be stamped on the first half of their moniker. The decisions on these, retrospectively, were easy ones.

I will say that if I had known what was coming, I could easily have saved some time by skipping the part where we picked names for girls. Apparently, I can only bear male children and only male children with ADD. But that's another story.

The situation with Mike and me was different. Mike is half Native American, and his last name is Adams, which is a testament to the loving memory of his adopted father, but not in any way to his native heritage. Somehow his being Indian trumped my being Welsh in the same way that paper covers rock or rock crushes scissors, and he won the ethnicity match without much debate. Our child would have an Indian name.

Fine. I'm O.K. with that. More than O.K., in fact.

But then things started to get a little  freaky. Mike wanted our child to have not just a Native name but a Lil'Wat name. The Lil'Wat are the Salish-speaking British Columbian tribe from which my husband's family hails.Their language is known as "Ucwalmicwts." I can't say it, either.

Mike started presenting me with choices.

Mike: "I like Ken'Knep."

Me: "What? We can't have a son called Ken'Knep! He will be tormented!"

Mike: "It will be totally unremarkable. Just look at all the unusual names kids have nowadays."

Me: "Mike, there may be some unusual names, but I promise you that there are no kids named Ken'Knep. And what the Hell do you know about what it would be like? You are named Mike Adams."

Mike: "All my life I have resented having such a boring name."

Me: "Right."

Various items of discussion were completely unpronounceable to me, but totally fine with Mike. Having grown up with a name that was butchered frequently, I am sensitive on this subject, but Mike was like a child in a candy store full of delightfully unusual signatures, totally unperturbed by thoughts of elementary school victim-hood or years of teacher garbling. These concerns to him were trifling.

So it went on and on like this, with both of us becoming more entrenched, irritated and tired, until finally it was suggested that our son be named "Mixalh" after an uncle. The pronunciation was best approximated as "MEE-koll" and it meant, very sweetly, "bear".

Mike: "Fine, but it's going to remind me of a bag of cement unless we do away with the 'x'."

Apparently, prominent in my husband's work at this time, which was carpentry, were the presence of large bags of cement marked "Mix-All".

So, it was decided.

We threw in two middle names, one for Mike and one for me, because that's just how we roll, and on May 16, 2005 was born Mikalh Justin Katigwa Adams, or, to be slightly more clear

{Lil'Wat Bear Who is Not a Bag of Cement} {To Be Set Free} {Justin from the Rats of NIMH} Adams.

Because this is what happens when stubborn people are allowed to breed.