I'm sure that somewhere in a thousand years of history there was a relative that sewed bandages during the Norman Invasion named Althea, I'll leave that to her grandmother to discover and report. My daughter has been given a free-spirited hippie name Rama Rama.
"Althea"--from The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.
I told Althea I was feeling lost
Lacking in some direction
Althea told me upon scrutiny
my back might need protection
I told Althea that treachery
was tearin me limb from limb
Althea told me: now cool down boy -
settle back easy Jim
You may be Saturday's child all grown
moving with a pinch of grace
You may be a clown in the burying ground
or just another pretty face
You may be the fate of Ophelia
sleeping and perchance to dream -
honest to the point of recklessness
self centered to the extreme
Ain't nobody messin with you but you
your friends are getting most concerned -
loose with the truth
maybe it's your fire
but baby...don't get burned
When the smoke has cleared, she said,
that's what she said to me:
You're gonna want a bed to lay your head
and a little sympathy
There are things you can replace
and others you cannot
The time has come to weigh those things
this space is getting hot -
you know this space is getting hot
I told Althea
I'm a roving sign -
that I was born to be a bachelor -
Althea told me: Ok that's fine -
So now I'm out trying to catch her
We're guilty of the same old thing
Talking a lot about less and less
And forgetting the love we bring
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I could just have easily called her "Bertha," but Althea has a better rhythm to it. (Gretchen Althea Batt/Franklin Harrison Batt both are 2-3-1 syllables, though the stress on the middle names is a little different. No matter. They're not the same person.)
I'll add to this post a little later. I need to go see Maggie with this here dictionary and choose a Chinese name.
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As it turns out, I took over the wrong dictionary. I haven't been a very good Chinese student for the past bit and a half and I forgot that the dictionary I had in hand was with Simplified Chinese characters and it didn't have entries for several of the characters we were looking for. Gretchen is still nameless in the East.
Westernwise, this was all sorted months ago. When I tell acquaintances that Gretchen is named after her aunt, who in turn was named after her...Great Aunt? (My grandfather's aunt is my what?)
I don't know yet, but did you know...Multiple Oscar-winner Tom Hanks is a third cousin four times removed to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. That's from geneaologyspot.com
(Update from South Carolina: FRANKLIN & GRETCHEN call YOU FATHER, Richard is Grandfather, Lewis is Great grandfather, Ludwig is Great-great-grandfather, JOHN is Great-great-grate -grandfather to your children! Gretchen would be the Great-great grand AUNT to your children. from Marion+4)
...When I tell these people where Gretchen's name comes from, they are shocked. This naming offspring after relatives is a very alien concept in Taiwan. I told the guy at the vegetarian noodle place next to Franklin's baby minder that in America, folks are named after relatives & famous people all the time and he looked at me as if I'd grown another set of auspicious-looking ears. Go look in the mirror and read the following sentence: Taiwanese parents often encase their child's umbilical cord in plastic and incorporate that bit of plastic into a calligraphy brush to be used for special occasions. The look on your face was likely similar to the look on his face when I told him that we recycle names.
Gretchen's grandfather is a fortune teller. Not a fortune teller like the Western stereotype, he's ... for argument's sake, he's a Taiwanese fortune teller. Great man, incredibly smart. Someone in whose footsteps his grandson would do well to tread. One of the many facets of the fortune teller's job is to help new parents choose auspicious names for their new bundles of joy. This is done by consulting the I-Ching. I wasn't there when he did it, but he likely looked at the time of birth, and the parents' time of birth and then took from a bowl of uncooked rice three pinches of grain and studied them. He may have taken three more and maybe three more, I'm a little rusty on my I-Ching. He counted the grains of rice in each pile and calculated the number of strokes in each character of the two names that Gretchen should have. Bear with me.
He gave us two lists of possible first and second characters to choose from. Each list has my Chinese surname 把 (Ba3--7 strokes) at the top of the paper. One page has two lists of characters with 8 and 10 strokes, respectively, and the other is made up of 9 & 7 stroke-count characters. So Maggie and I have been sitting down, trying out different names, for pronunciation and meaning. Either of these two stroke-count combinations will produce a child that ROCKS! or at least one that brings honor upon the family.
I digress for a moment...Andy Batt, Sarah Luginbuhl, and Gary Howe all chose 3.6kg for Gretchen's birth weight and they were absolutely correct. As you read this, heap some honor upon these three fine people. No one guessed the date correctly except for my brother Pete & his remarkable wife Shari who informed me of their guesses after the fact. I am unable to decide if this is acceptable. Let your conscience be your guide.
I'm thinking of a number between one and a thousand. Anyone?
Anyway, when Gretchen has a Chinese name, I'll post it here.
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Why Gretchen?
We're calling her Gretchen Althea Batt. My sister Gretchen has led an innocent life and has taught the family many lessons whether we know it or not. She has made us who we are and is as loving a person as you ever hope to meet. I hope that by being named after a "special" aunt, GABby will learn tolerance & charity.
I called her a few months ago and told her of the plan, but I wasn't sure if it had really sunk in. All I got were a couple of uh-huhs and okays. It wasn't until she said "You're got to be kidding!" that I knew we'd communicated. Later, when I called her on her birthday, I asked if she knew what the baby was going to be called, and she proudly said, "Gretchen."
I called her group home after midnight on 12/9 when Maggie was finally sleeping. When I told the care giver who answered the phone who I was she asked if I had any news. Upon delivering it, she let a shriek that sounded like she was delivering something! I don't think a non-relative has been as excited as Brenda. And Aunt Gretchen was just as pleased as punch with the news. She's so sociable, many of you may remember, and having this kind of news to tell and retell is like coffee for her. Four days later, I wonder if she's slept.
Finally, Gretchen is a name which brings my Western and Eastern families together. Perhaps. When Maggie's father first learned that we were pregnant again he was overjoyed. He wants a grandchild named Chen so bad that he can taste it, and he made us an offer he felt we couldn't refuse not to name the second child Ba, but instead to use his surname, Chen. He wanted to make sure that his family name would continue through the ages.
I grew up with the surname Batt, not Smith, or Johnson. It was odd enough, sometimes cool, but there was ample opportunity for teasing. I was never "Fat Batt," fortunately. Actually, I don't recall having a particularly hard go with the family name. But it was definitely unusual. In Taiwan, Ba is the same. Very uncommon indeed. In the seven years I've been here (12/17/99) I've probably heard more comments on the strangeness of my Chinese surname than I did as a result of Batt in 29 years in the States. At any rate, I've certainly enjoyed having an odd last name.
Would I rather have a child share the most common surname in the world, Chen, or to have one that starts conversations, Ba? Ba won.
As a consolation, Grandpa Chen's second Granddaughter is named Gre(a)tChen. Probably not enough to cash in on the original offer but it's a nod.
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