Call Me Gunnlaugur

I'm thinking of changing my name. I came across a name at work the other day which appealed to me. Gunnlaugur! How awesome is that name? Seriously wouldn't you like a name like Gunnlaugur? It rolls off the tongue like a block of cement. Gunnlaugur MacPherson, now there's a name you could break rocks with. You could slip that name into a sock and mug somebody with it. Gunnlaugur makes one think of wolves and glaciers and exposed granite cliffs. Neil is the sort of name you associate with silly blog entries.

Not many people take the opportunity to rename themselves, possibly because of all the paperwork involved. In some cultures, of course, it is understood that whatever a child is called is only a placeholder until the child comes of age and gains a more appropriate moniker. I'm not sure that's a great idea as it only takes one embarrassing incident near the crucial date for you to be a practical joke for the rest of your life. Still its probably at least as good as the current naming conventions in our society which seem to mine equally from the bible, Hollywood and the covers of porn DVDs.

In Indonesia there is a tradition of giving a child a name and then watching it like a hawk for a few years. If the child seems to have an unusual amount of illness or misfortune it is decided that the name is too "strong" for the child and the parents will rename it. One can't help thinking that a particularly sickly or accident prone child might go through half a dozen names before reaching puberty. Can you imagine if the same thing happened here?
"Good morning Mrs MacPherson, how's young Neil?"
"Oh he broke his arm so now he's Gunnlaugur."
"Great, he won't break anything with a name like that"

Of course a short, snappy name like Neil has its advantages. Given the Australian predilection for shortening any name to its first syllable it is kind of useful to have a complete name that only has one to begin with. If I had been called Sebastian (or for that matter Gunnlaugur) its entirely possible I could have lived my entire life without learning what my full name was.

Names have always been imbued with a great deal of power. You can't effectively sue, stalk or arrange the assassination of someone unless you know their name. At least it helps a great deal if you don't have to set a hit man onto his target by pointing out the potential victim in a shopping and shouting,
"That's him, that's the guy I want you to kill."
There are probably more wholesome reasons why names are good as well. Personally I rather suspect that the entire idea of naming children can be traced back to the first couple who had more than one child. "Hey you!" is a perfectly adequate form of address for parents with only one kid but after you have a couple it starts to get difficult. The earliest children's names were probably something like, Child 1, Child 2, Child 3 and so on (I believe they still do something like that in Bali) but infant mortality being what it was in those days there must have been a constant shuffling of positions. How did parents break the news of a sibling death to their children back then?
"Congratulations Child 4 you are now Child 3. Better luck next time Child 2."
Possibly part of the reason the child mortality rate was so high was because status hungry youngsters were looking to move up. Finally when Child 2, formerly Child 9, was found standing over the body of Child 1 with an expectant grin on his face his exasperated parents probably said something like, "To hell with it. I'll just call you Gunnlaugur"