Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature - Scarecrow Press

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4 Chapter One Boyle, and Gloria Gilman (nicknamed Gee Gee). She hints at the values of $uzy $lade by writing her name with dollar signs while she uses sarcasm in the name of Miss Grand from Videoland. Wally Witherspoon in If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever? has an alliterative name that encourages Wally’s “friends” to tease him about his family’s mortuary business. They call him Wither Up and Die, Withering Heights, and Wither-Away. In I Stay Near You, the parents of rock star Saint Vincent named him after their favorite poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, while the parents of Opal Ringer apparently named her after an opal ring. In ME ME ME ME ME, Kerr quotes from her father’s journal, “Our daughter is dating the local undertaker’s son, Donald Dare, tall, dark, and harmless. Dares very little is my guess” (9). This sounds almost too “polished” to have really been written in a daily journal, but it is fun to read not just because of the alliteration and the pun, but also because the name scans the same as Donald Duck. Kerr surprises and amuses her readers by creating character names which at first go unnoticed, but can later be used in a pun. For example in Little Little, Sydney Cinnamon is a catchy, alliterative name for the dwarf hero. Midway through the book when Andrea Applebaum’s mother hires Sydney to be the baby at a New Year’s Eve party, he and Andrea grow romantic in the basement and Andrea croons, “Cinnamon and Applebaum. Put us together and we’re a pie” (101). Kerr undoubtedly named John Fell, the hero of her three mystery novels, Fell, Fell Back, and Fell Down, with an eye to such additional puns as fell apart, fell to pieces, and fell in love. When he gets hired, or more accurately bribed, to attend the Gardner School in place of a boy named Thompson Pingree, but called Ping, readers get the image of how the boy that Fell is protecting is batted back and forth by his quarreling parents. Names Based on Allusions Unexpected allusions often bring incongruous images as when in ME ME ME ME ME, Kerr names the dormitories at her old school Little Dorrit, David Copperfield, Hard Times, and Great Expectations. This was partly to honor Charles Dickens, whose skill with names she has
long admired, but also to provide fodder for clever punning. In Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack, the cat, which was found under a car, is named Nader in honor of Ralph Nader, who as a critic of the American automobile industry has also spent considerable time under cars. In ME ME ME ME ME, the second story is entitled “Where Are You Now, William Shakespeare?” It is about Marijane’s childhood “romance” with a ten-year-old neighbor named William Shakespeare, but called Billy for short. They both agree that if they ever marry and have a son they will name him Ellis (after her father) rather than William. Billy insists that this is not because William Shakespeare is a funny name; “It’s just that there’s a famous writer with the same name” (36). In Night Kites, Erick has a crush on Nicki, whose father, Captain Marr (as in such sea-related words as marine, maritime, marina, and marinara sauce) runs the Kingdom by the Sea motel, which is a “tacky, shabby, shitty, going to rack and ruin” place, while at the same time bearing witness to having once “been a crazy, fantastic place: mysterious and silly and rare” (140–41). The suites that face the sea have Edgar Allan Poe names: Bells, Bells, Bells; The Raven; Helen; and The Black Cat. On some afternoons Nicki works at Anabel’s Resale Shop, but on other afternoons, she and Erick swim at City by the Sea or make love in Dream within a Dream. An example of a more generalized kind of allusion occurs in I’ll Love You When You’re More Like Me. The teenage television star Sabra St. Amour tells how her mother used to burst into her room, turn off Elvis, and say, “What are we doing lollygagging around here like Mrs. Average and her daughter, Mediocre? Let’s go to the Apple for some fun!” (115). Sabra goes on to explain that this was way back in the “Dark Ages when Sam, Sam Superman” had them trapped in suburbia and Sabra’s name was Maggie. Their glamorous new life is as different from the old as is Sabra’s new name from her original name of Maggie Duggy. Ironic Names Names for Fun 5 When authors say one thing while really meaning something else they are using irony, which forces readers to become intellectually involved in figuring out the deeper, as opposed to the surface, meaning. This is not a kind of humor that will make people laugh out loud, but they may
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Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature - Scarecrow Press

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