What's in a Name?

I have no problem with my name and would never change it if the opportunity arose.  In fact, I rather like it.  Jason Thompson.  The name is direct and straight to the point without being muddied up by a gratuitous middle name.  Jason derives from the Greek hero Jason, who led the mighty Argonauts on their quest to find the Golden Fleece.  He was a mighty and great hero until you read the epilogue.  Then the proceedings take a turn for the very sad.  Thompson is of the Scottish and English origin and means son of Thom.  I am led to assume that somewhere back in the day I had a relative named Thom who didn’t care much for original names or lived in a rather lazy village.  Now that you’ve sat through my rather indulgent history lesson that is relevant to 3,214 people (according to white pages names), we shall move on to the crux of this piece.  While I, Jason Thompson, have no problem with my name (and rather quite like it), I don’t particularly like when people call me by it.

While this may seem like a major problem worthy of intense psychoanalytic probing or at the very least a Congressional hearing, this odd occurrence has not started to bother me until recently.  I noticed that when somebody used my name casually and not out of necessity, it rather annoyed me or made me feel weird.  Now when I say not out of necessity, I mean instances where my name is understood.  If we are having a conversation and the person who is not me substitutes Jason for you, man, or adds it superfluously, I begin to feel uneasy.  An easy example would be somebody saying “I have no idea what you’re talking about Jason” rather than simply saying “I have no idea what you’re talking about”.  Why add on the Jason in a two person conversation?  I have a clear picture of whose words you fail to comprehend at the moment.  A situation like that makes me feel uneasy and brings me out of the stupor I enter when I’m not the one driving a conversation.  Why say my name when it is not necessary?  What is this person trying to prove and how can I maneuver their next comment into witty banter that will lead to them sleeping with me?

I may not have the answers to any of these questions but I have begun to decipher some reasons to my own unease with hearing my name.  First off, I rarely do what I am rallying against in this particular case.  This is one of the few aspects of my personal life where I live up to the impossibly high standard I set.  I will only superfluously say somebodies name to drive home a witty point or in my quest to maintain an ironic disposition at all times.  If I break perfect irony I will have committed the ultimate sin of being sincere and that is a crime against nature.  Another reason may be to preserve the aura around a name.  Using a name when unnecessary wears it down and takes away the power of when the name is actually said.  The fewer times I use somebody’s ever special name, the more power and weight it has when I do use it.  If I’m just throwing out people’s names when not necessary, the name loses all meaning.  We might as well just live in a world of all pronouns.

There are probably more reasons to my name-phobic ways but I really don’t care to get into them.  Sure they may be interesting but whatever you’ll just have to keep guessing.  I have no doubt that many of you reading this piece have grown tired of nodding your head in agreement so ending this prematurely is being done for your own good or whatever.  So don’t call me by name if it is not necessary.  It’s kind of annoying.