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Having spent most of my life with the monogram “BM,” I
consider myself something of an authority on lousy initials. I say
“most” because for a brief period I used the surname of a
stepfather: Osborn. Precious little relief there, initial-wise.
Adding insult to, well, insult, researchers at the
University of California at San Diego now say that derogatory
initials can kill you. According to a recent study, men with the
right initials lived 4.48 years longer than a control group while
the initial-impaired died an average of 2.8 years earlier. And they
don’t mean blissfully slipping away in your sleep; they mean double
the accidental-death rate and a sevenfold increase in suicides.
As a kid I recall taking some grief over it but don’t
remember giving any thought to offing myself. Smacking some
fast-mouthed kid or another maybe, but not suicide. I didn’t even
resent my parents, though my wife nixed a few unpleasant
combinations for our own kids.
Having always had perfectly innocuous initials herself, I’m not sure
what she was so worried about. She denies it, but I halfway suspect
she might have been one of those ornery little gnomes who preyed on
unfortunately-initialed mopes like me.
No, I was more determined that our children not be
called by their middle names as I am, which has caused much more
grief than my initials. For instance, I go by “R. Brent Morrison”
(partly to alter my initials from BM to RBM), so folks often assume
my first name must be something so horrible that I had no choice
(Reginald? Reinhardt? Ratbert? Rumplestiltskin? Reflux?).
Actually it’s “Robert,” and like most others I know who
use their middle names it was my parent’s choice. Changing to
Robert at this late date would seem no less awkward than “Reflux.”
A few years ago I dredged up the courage to ask my
mother why she had done this to me. I unloaded it all: missed role
calls in school because I didn’t know who “Bobby” was, standardized
forms with space for a middle initial only, accusations of
pretentiousness.
I even had a boss who couldn’t get “Robert” out of his head from my
original application. He knew something was wrong by my reaction,
but could never quite put his finger on it. After three years he
finally cornered me: “Do you prefer ‘Robert,’ or ‘Bob?’”
My Mom, then in her 60s, let me rant. When I cooled down to a
simmer she apologized, sort of. “OK,” she promised. “I’ll never do
it again.”
The University of California study considered the 5 million or so
people who died in California from 1969 through 1997, concentrating
on men because they are less likely to change their initials.
Researchers examined 11 “good” sets of initials, like ACE, JOY, and
LOV, and 19 “bad” ones, including BUM, DUD, and PIG.
“People are usually pretty careful not to name their kid
‘Knucklehead,’ but I guess it's easy for parents not to notice
what's happening with the initials” says Nicholas Christenfeld,
Ph.D., who directed the study. “They need to watch that.”
Indeed we do, but even after being branded with initials
Christenfeld might say would kill me some day, I see how it can slip
through the cracks. For example, we were mainly focused on giving
our kids names that would be neither too common nor too odd. In
fact, I objected to my wife’s preferred name for our daughter
because I’d never heard of it and neither had anyone else we ran it
by – come on, how many kids do you know dubbed “Girl-Child?”
Just kidding. We did go with my wife’s choice, ironically, just as
it was poised to become the next “Debbie.” As a result my daughter
now shares a name with about every third little girl born since
1986. She has fine initials, though.
So if you’re hung with APE, HOG, or ROT, or BM, Reginald or
Girl-Child for that matter, don’t be too hard on your folks. It
might come into style someday. And even if it doesn’t, you may not
live long enough to find out.
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