names

I find names fascinating. Growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, right next to NIH, I went to school with kids from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. My brother’s soccer coach was Sunder Subramanian. I still have nightmares about Lucy Edegipang-Koge’s devastating dodgeball throws – she seemed to be six feet tall by the age of eleven.

We always got a kick out of looking through the elementary school phonebook and finding the most fascinating names. Usually these were children my sister had already befriended, as she has made it her life’s pursuit to seek out the unique and different. When she was at Beth El nursery school, she made friends with the twin blonde Swedish girls who were the only non-jews. In Elementary school she became good friends with LaShawn Schmuck – an elementary school phone book all-star.

This is a trend that has continued into her adult life. She met a Bengali woman on a Greyhound bus and lived with her family in Queens for two years. For a while her best friend was the Syrian guy who ran the falafel stand around the corner from her East Village apartment. I don’t remember his name, but they called each other "cousin," and she would stop in at various times throughout the day and late into the night, playing tapes on his little stereo and entertaining the customers.

Now it is Rachel who is sought out for her own uniqueness – she talks in perfect fake accents to cab drivers without warning you first and can make almost anyone, anywhere laugh at any time. I’ve seen her reduce the most intimidating men to boyish giggles. She is obsessed with court TV and can discuss the latest celebrity trial using legal terms I’ve never heard but has to call me to ask where Wisconsin is. She still feels burdened by our last name, though, and has (much to my horror) taken to pronouncing it "Fein-steen" on occasion.

When I worked in the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department at The University of Iowa (which was even more boring than it sounds) I was in charge of the graduate admissions process. I would receive letters and email from prospective students from India and China on a daily basis:

"Professor Feinstein,

I am wishing you will find it right for to gain my acceptance and make the dream come true. My future it is now in your hands."

I wanted to accept all of them. Not only were they heartbreakingly earnest, they were brilliant – one woman from China got a perfect score on her English GRE. Unfortunately the department would only accept eight foreign students a year, even though they were infinitely more qualified than the eight domestic students that balanced out the quota.

There were some incredible names, though. A woman with the last name Yerrakondreddygari applied. I really wanted her to get in just so I could say it on a regular basis. There was already a man in the department with the first name Saravanababu (he went by Babu) and a woman with the last name Thongboonchoo. In my dreams they got married and he took her last name.

I was just reading an article about this suspect JonBenet Ramsey killer, and there was a quote from Gen. Suwat Thamrongsrisakul. That’s an awesome name. Rachel thinks the guy’s guilty, but I have my doubts.