Today, I have been asked, or ordered, given the tone of the prompt, to write about my first name.* The instructions continued to include origin, etymology, significance, meaning, etc. The problem is, those things had no connection to my mother’s decision. She chose to name me Eric Stephen Jackson.
Mom named me after a German actor, Erich von Stroheim, and Stephen Foster, an American composer. I learned later in life that she named me Erich because he was a famous actor and director. She named me after Stephen Foster because he was known as “the father of American music.” Whether that is the true story or not, her name choices created a conflict. This conflict put me in an uncomfortable position long before I knew what an uncomfortable position was.
The problem was that Mom and Dad lived with my grandfather when I was born. Grandpa Jackson had been a Navy man during World War I. There was no way any grandson of his would be named Erich after a German. This was true even if the German was an acclaimed American actor. One who was also a director and played American soldiers in the movies.
Eventually, a truce was declared in the Jackson household, and I was officially named Stephen Eric Jackson. Grandpa Jackson needed the last word. He started calling me Stevie. He didn’t like Stephen for some reason. That went over with my mom like a lead balloon, and the battle was on.
She began to use nicknames for me. Neither of my given names was used again during my time living in that household. I was Butchy, George, Sam, Buddy, or whatever came to mind, but never Eric, Steve, or Stevie.
So, you see, none of the things people look up names for, such as entomology and history, meant anything to me or my family. I did not know my legal name until I was sixteen. This led to some interesting and amusing issues later in my life. If I ever finish editing my memoir, you might learn the story behind my name morphing into S. Eric Jackson.
Here is one amusing, in a way, thought in closing. I was probably one of the few police officers in the U.S. who were hired with more aliases than many of the crooks they put in jail during their careers.
* This was originally written as part of a WordPress writing challenge. WP sent out prompts daily that challenged users to write about a particular topic or idea.
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