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Somehow the subject came up. A couple of years before Mom passed away, we got to chatting about why she and Dad hadn’t named me after him — Peter.
Apparently Dad never liked his name so they named me Thomas, which was Dad’s middle name. I happened to mention that it was nice anyway that they had decided to give me his middle name of Peter. That was when Mom advised me I had no middle name. When I protested that I always used Peter as my middle name, she told me to go check my birth certificate. But why did I think Peter was my middle name all these years? Because that’s what you decided is how she put it. But I did it because I thought Peter was my middle name. She ended that particular conversation by concluding I was wrong and it wasn’t the only time in my life I was wrong (she mentioned a few non-Italian girls I had dated), and it won’t be the last time you’re wrong either. I wanted to ask her if Thomas had really been Dad’s middle name. Come to think of it, Dad had always loved the cowboy hero of that era — Tom Mix. Gee — I could have been named after Tom Mix.
I shouldn’t have been surprised about being unaware for the first 65 years of my life that I had given myself a middle name. A year earlier she’d told me that my bachelor Uncle Chibby, was actually named Pasquale. Shouldn’t his nickname logically have been Pat? I found out that Uncle Chibby did not like the name Pasquale, so he called himself Charles, which in South Philly became Chibby. That bit of information caused me to ask my Mom, whose name was Eleanor, why her sister Mary called her Helen. It seemed to please her was my Mom’s answer.
Uncovering the real names in both my wife’s family and mine has always been tricky. It doesn’t help that by being raised Catholic, at Baptism you had to be named after a saint. I don’t have a big problem with that tradition because I lucked out with Thomas. However, somewhere in the world are there kids named after St. Notburga and St. Flosculus? I have no doubt these children either assumed aliases or became serial killers. Satan worshippers don’t have it too easy either. Would you like to be named Beelzebub?
Another trick we use in our families is to claim we are naming our newborn after someone in the family when in reality we are not. For instance, my wife’s grandmother was named Mongooch. I’m sure Mongooch was a really lovely person, but my feeling is if your family names you Mongooch, that act should be declared unconstitutional as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
What to do when your mother wants you to honor your grandmother by naming your kids Mongooch? You name them Norma, Debra, and Eleanor, and claim that you’ve named the kids after Mongooch. Who’s going to dispute you? Grandmother Mongooch was happy, the kid’s parents were happy, and the kids who escaped being called Mongooch for the rest of their lives would hopefully have a better chance to grow up well adjusted. (Columnist’s note: In the end, the kid named Eleanor wound up calling herself Diana, no doubt after the Goddess of hunting and wildlife. Except there wasn’t any wildlife around Eighth and Catherine where Diana spent most of her life, nor in the church bingo halls she loved so much. The only hunting Diana ever did was after a number that would give her four corners).
Immigrants also faced the possibility, back in the day, of American inspectors, because of their unfamiliarity with ethnic names, misspelling or outright changing their names. I have seen various permutations of my surname Cardella. I had a friend Ben who, for over 50 years, thought his last name was Monastro until he discovered that his father spelled his own surname Monastra. When Ben questioned him about it, his father told him he had been misspelling his last name his entire life. Apparently Ben’s father didn’t want to undermine his son’s confidence by correcting him. What the hell was the difference anyway, he figured. My wife’s maiden name is Scroccarelli. I’ve often marveled at how this surname survived the inspectors at Ellis Island.
At one time, it was common in broadcasting to change ethnic surnames to Americanize them. In Hollywood, Allen Konigsberg had become Woody Allen. I had decided to stay with Cardella because as a disc jockey in Wildwood, I liked the catchy sound of “Tom Cardella, the Most Happy Fella.” “The Most Happy Fella” was a popular Broadway show at the time and, oh forget it, it was dumb. I had never even seen the show. I came to broadcast St. Joe’s basketball games with two Jewish friends, who decided to change their broadcast surnames. I had no problem remembering to introduce Ed Goldman as Ed Golden, but for some reason I had a mental block going from Barry Rosenberg to Barry Ross. I stuck a large card in front of me with the name Ross, but much to his chagrin (expressed off-the-air in very creative profanity), I continued to introduce him on-the-air as Rosenberg.
I ask you, do WASPS have these problems?
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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