Years ago, I wrote about favorite names I’d come across in my lifetime, some I thought gratingly awful, some riotously funny. One was a kid I knew named Three Searles, named Three because he was his parents’ third child and they couldn’t think of another name at the time, so they named him a number. Can you imagine what his life was like being named after a sum? One can only imagine.
Another was a girl I knew with the last name of Turvy and you can guess what first name her folks gave her. Yes, Topsy. Poor Topsy.
Another was a name I always thought sounded weird although the girl herself really wasn’t; Melanie Fleegle. But my favorite name of all time was owned by a short, funny and lively school chum a year or two younger than I, whose name was Poppy Litinsky. She doesn’t use that name any longer because she married a man named Bob Madden and took his last name, but I’ve been so in love with the humorous sound of “Poppy Litinsky,” I have never been able to let it go.
Poppy Litinsky will always be Poppy Litinsky to me. Poppy was very smart, very friendly and never seemed to think she had to apologize for her name. Her mother, a woman who gardened, thought her beautiful new baby girl resembled a red poppy, called her that and the name stuck.
It was a wee bit odd because her real given name was Ruby, which as everyone knows is a red gem. I guess her folks thought the flower was redder than a ruby, so Poppy she became and Poppy she has remained. When I wrote the .