Frosty
????????
OR
“That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” At least that’s how Juliet tells in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but, would it?
At our family dinner Sunday night, Mary and I showed pictures of Frosty, our new puppy, expecting everyone would be excited about her and like her name. There in lay the problem.
“You can’t call a sweet girl puppy a snow MAN’s name.”
“That’s as bad as Johnny Cash’s ‘Boy named Sue’!”
“It’s pure fourth grade!”
“You can be more creative than that!”
Together the college aged grandkids decided to re-name Frosty.
They collected a dozen names from the group and had everyone vote for their favorite one. They soon reduced the list to three and let Mary and me pick from that list. Looks like Mary and I have lost control, if we ever had it.
I don’t remember what the final three names were, but we decided not to use any of them; we did agree to think about re-naming our sweet little baby girl.
I had heard that Native Alaskans had 40 names for snow and we were able to find a few that could be used as names. Snow is Sese; ice is Siku, and that’s about all we could find for snow.
But Frosty will look like a very diminutive polar bear, we found Nanuk is polar bear, and Miska is little bear. Nonook is cute; so much for the Inuit language.
Coton de Tulear’s are French dogs (yes, they bark in French) and the Fleu de lis is a symbol of French Royalty, we though Fleury might be a nice combination of French and a fine snow flake. Chien Blanc is French for White Dog; that’s about all we could come up with from the Gauls.
As a tribute to my ancestors we found the Gaelic for Frosty is Glosbe. Finally we thought we might see what she would be called in Russia. There Frosty comes out as Moroznyy. Try saying that three times in a row, or even pronouncing it!/
One more option, why don’t we just take Tulear and make it Tuley?
So, now we have a dilemma! To make matters worse we are bound by the advice I received many years ago and passed on to our kids: If your family doesn’t like something you’re doing, someone you’re dating, or disagrees about what’s best for you. Listen to them, their see through the eyes of experience and have your long term well-being in mind.
Please help us out. Do we stick with Frosty? Or do we pick one of the names above? Send your answer in a comment below, or send me an e-mail, par.donahue@comcast.net, before we make Frosty schizophrenic.