Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature - Scarecrow Press

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6 Chapter One smile inwardly when they realize that the protagonist of Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack is anything but “dinky.” A more somber example is the title of Kerr’s Gentlehands, which is based on the postwar hunt for one of the cruelest of the Nazi SS guards at Auschwitz, who taunted his Jewish prisoners from Rome by playing Puccini’s opera Tosca and singing “O dolci mani,” which translates as “gentle hands.” The plot of the story centers around whether Buddy’s mysterious German grandfather is this man. He has named his keeshond dog Mignon, a name that he says comes from an opera, but a more gruesome interpretation could be that it comes from filet mignon, as a reminder of how Gentlehands used to turn selected prisoners over to his dogs. Another solemn example of irony occurs in the book Linger, which is about the 1992 Gulf War. In it, the soldier who was so beautiful that he was called Movie Star comes home from the war with his face practically blown away by “friendly fire,” meaning that he was accidentally shot by soldiers on his own team. The term is so ironic that the military no longer uses it for such accidental injuries. Names to Reveal Social Class and Attitudes Is That You, Miss Blue? is set in a southern boarding school for young women. While most of the girls come from old, well-established families, a couple of them come from families that are newly affluent due to the discovery of oil on their land. Rather than going into a long, sociological description of the many differences this entails, Kerr puts across the idea by stating that Carolyn Cardmaker’s roommate is named Cute Diblee, “and Cute isn’t a nickname either. She’s got a sister called Sweet” (33). In the same book, one of the teachers, Ernestine Blue, is unusually religious. When Miss Blue puts a crucifixion painting in the bathroom, the girls ridicule her by devising such nicknames as O Torn Cheeks, Thorn-Brain, and O Fingers-Nailed. Flanders Brown, the protagonist of the story, is amazed when one of the other teachers tells her that she had gone to school with Ernestine Blue, who had been called Nesty and was chased by all the boys. Miss Blue teaches chemistry and reveals something about her own attitudes when she teaches the girls about snob gases, those “that refuse to combine with anything else under any
Names for Fun 7 conditions.” She explains to the class that even though Cavendish, the discoverer of such gases as argon and neon, called them “noble gases because of their elite quality, she preferred to think of them as the snobs” (121). In Little Little, Larry La Belle leaves little doubt about what he thinks of Little Little’s two boyfriends. He calls the one who has a hunchback and makes extra money as the mascot for a pest control company the Roach. He refers to the other one, who is already known as Opportunity Knox because of the way he uses his dwarfism to attract followers to his fledging church, Mr. Clean or Mr. White Suit. In Gentlehands, Buddy is surprised that one of Skye’s wealthy friends who is named Conrad goes by Connie. In Buddy’s crowd no selfrespecting boy would have allowed himself to be called Connie. Later in the book, Skye tells Buddy that Connie Spreckles has a new Connie. When Buddy looks puzzled, she explains that he has a new Lincoln Continental, which everybody calls Connies. This patronizing scene appears near the end of the book and communicates to readers that Skye and Buddy are close to the end of their summer romance. Humorous Names to Balance Serious Issues Kerr’s 1986 Night Kites is one of the earliest books to be written about a family’s experience with AIDS. When their oldest son, Pete, comes home to die from the disease, Kerr counterbalances the basic sadness of the situation with names that make readers smile. For as long as Erick, the younger brother who tells the story, can remember, there has been tension between Pete and the boys’ father. Pete used to call him O Infallible, but the younger Erick, who did not know the word infallible, sensed only the hostility and interpreted the name as “O Full of Bull.” Another bit of family history relating to Pete is that at age thirteen he knew he was gay and named his dog Oscar as a secret memorial to Oscar Wilde. The family’s minister, Reverend Shorr, tries to be helpful during this difficult period, but the Rudd family still refers to him as Reverend Snore because he always reads his sermons, which sound like “instructions for assembling mail-order items” (126). Among Kerr’s best-known books is her 1994 Deliver Us from Evie, a story told by Parr Burrman, the younger brother of Evie, who is a gay
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Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature - Scarecrow Press

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