The Name Game

Names have always held an odd fascination for me. My mother despised her name, which I never fully understood. “Bessie Katherine” was a good, solid southern name, and seems pretty tame compared with that of one of her childhood friends, who was unfortunately saddled with “Highly Devine. Nevertheless, my mother shed the hated “Bessie” at the first opportunity, changed the “Katherine” to “Catherine,” and forever after went by Catherine B. Ferguson, which I considered awfully prosaic—especially considering that her own grandmother had the most, uh, spectacular name I ever heard. It was “Rachel Lucretia Cassandra Josephine Sarah Elizabeth Margaret Katherine Evelyn Dow Turner Dillard Gold. No, really. Seriously. Do you think I could make up something like that? So the story goes, my great great grandparents had 21 children, the majority of whom were wiped out in some pandemic or other, and my great grandmother was named after her dead siblings. Isn’t that charming? And, you may well ask, with such a wealth to choose from, which did she choose to go by?

Lu. They called her Lu.

My mother pored over baby name books, determined that her daughters would not have names that could easily be lampooned or twisted into ugly or insulting nicknames. No sirree, her daughters weren’t going to be made fun of, or likened to a cow, due to an ill considered name choice. After careful consideration, she settled on “Teresa Marie” and “Linda Katherine.” Unfortunately, her “best laid plans” came to naught, as my classmates gleefully locked onto my last name as the target of their barbs and I was known all through school as “Fergie.” Oh, sure, it’s a very trendy moniker now, but back then I hated it.

In a sublime example of cosmic irony, when I married, I traded in “Ferguson” for “Coffin.” Now, that’s a last name with real baggage. It elicits snorts and snickers wherever it goes. I’ve even had people blurt out, “That’s not a real name!” Pizza places have actually hung up on me when I gave them my last name… after they ASKED for it!

The only place where the name Coffin doesn’t lift an eyebrow is the island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts. In the 1640’s, four families settled on the island: The Gardners, the Folgers, the Starbucks, and—the Coffins. (Clearly we should have gone into the coffee business… but I digress.) If you show up on Nantucket and mention your name, a crowd quickly gathers, armed with genealogy charts, wanting to see how you’re related. Half the businesses on Main Street are called “Coffin” this-or-that: Coffin General Store, Coffin Real Estate, the Jared Coffin House. It’s a real hoot—if you’re named Coffin.

The name has a long, illustrious, and probably apocryphal history, tracing back to 1066, when William the Conqueror decided he wanted to own that charming little island across the channel. His knights received land in exchange for their services. (There is still a Coffin estate in England.) Anyway, some of the “Chauvin” ancestors settled in London. The name “Chauvin” became “Coffin,” and one of them must have been quite a woodworker. He became known for crafting small, ornamental jewelry boxes. They called them coffins, of course. Later the family “branched out,” as it were. So, YES, if you were wondering, coffins ARE named after the family.

It’s a tough name to grow up with, despite the history. Fergie simply pales in comparison. I just wanted to say to my kids: Just remember. Coffin is the coolest name on earth—on October 31^st.