I was supposed to write about my name, but I realized how disgustingly boring that would be. I decided to do Yuri's instead.
So I named my kid Yuri Kristof. Well, actually, we did. Everyone in the family was expecting me to name my son after a deceased grandfather, whom I was never close to. We rarely talked because the moment we did, he ended up criticizing me from root to tip, head to toe, A to Z, and blah. Ergo, I did not name my beautiful son after him because---I don't know---I'm mean and ungrateful?
Initially, I was tempted to name him Mark Anthony or Peter Paul Joseph or any of the Beatles (or combined) or any of the Hanson brothers; but this was against my better judgment. Being one who is named so lousily (add lazily and cheesily to that---LeAn is actually Leah and Antonio put together. Rolling my eyes a million times here. My name is a testimony of my parents' naivety at the time of my birth), I promised to do better than my mother and father.
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| I have a thing for drummers. Would it have been a better idea if I had named my kid Ringo Starr? |
In 2007, when I realized that I screwed up, everyone was raving about this Jumong guy on TV. Of course, being the anti-primetime TV renegade that I am, I refused to watch the show. Apparently, Horace was addicted to it, what with ALL of his dorm buddies going crazy about it. In Jumong, there was a character named Yuri. BUT I refuse to accept that this is where Horace got our kid's name. Well, he denies it as well; but deep inside, I know Jumong has something to do with all this. DEYM YOOU!
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| Nope, I did not name my kid after this guy. I swear. |
Well, anyway, Horace has this huge man crush on Nicolas Cage when he starred in the movie Lord of War, where the out-of-the-spotlight-but-still-oh-so-hot actor played a Ukrainian-American gunrunner named Yuri Orlov. So one night, while I was busy contemplating on the best way to tell my family that their dreams for me were officially over, he rushed into the room and blurted out that he finally figured out what to name our child---that Eureka moment was priceless, or so he claims.
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| Nicolas Cage as Yuri Orlov (Lord of War) |
Yuri. The first time I heard it, I fell in love with the name. I've always had a thing for Russians and Russian-sounding stuff. Giving a Russian name to my still faceless baby was a cheap shot. What if he turned out to look, uhm, different? But what the heck! I agreed almost immediately and said that it was final: he's going to be Yuri.
Then there's the second name. I was never really a fan of long names, and I thought that since I only had one given name and so does Horace, we'd stick with giving our child just one name as well. Yuri. Just Yuri. But somehow, deep in the recesses of my sick brain, I knew there was something missing, like it wasn't quite that yet.
While I was at work the next day, I checked my mail and noticed that I received a notification for a new article posted on a blog I had subscribed to. The blog was owned by Nicholas D. Kristof, a human rights journalist. Back when I was capable of reading such intellectually stimulating stuff, I adored his writing and visited his blog every day. He was just so honest and concerned and opinionated and all that jazz. Blah.
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| Nick Kristof. Not quite a babyface there, yeah. |
Kristof sounded perfect with Yuri. That Russian sting was even made stronger. I was tempted to add Nicolas since, well, Yuri Orlov was Nicolas Cage and Kristof's first name is Nicholas. But it sounded overdone to me. So I stuck with it: Yuri Kristof.
So I am not dumb, and I do know that the conventional spelling for my son's second name should come with an extra F: Kristoff. But conventional it is not. So stop bugging me about having missed an F. I did not. OK?
Seven months before he was born, he already had a name. One that I was so excited to make official. On May 14, 2008, I gave birth to that gunrunner slash human rights journalist. A clash, I must say.
Well, that's about that. How about you? What's in your name? I'd love to know. :)
