Keep on Piyushing: Presidential Candidate Name-Calling

                                             Nomen est omen.  — Plautus

Louisiana Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Bobby Jindal has been hovering on the edges of recent political news.  And not in a good way.  His ‘official’ social media rollout was accompanied by a creepy hidden video of Bobby and wife announcing the yes-we’re-in decision to their completely uninterested, drone-camera-ambushed children.  The very fact that Jindal decided to jump aboard this cycle’s Republican crazy train opened his dismal gubernatorial record to national scrutiny.  More damning, perhaps, is the existential scorn issuing from the Indian American community (for starters, google Hari Kondabolu’s #Bobbyjindalissowhite). 

This scorn coalesces around Jindal’s systematic erasing of his ethnicity.  From his early conversion to Evangelical Christianity to his condemnation of ‘italicized Americans’ to the inartfully ‘whitened’ portraits festooning his gubernatorial offices to the purported vestimentary prohibitions (no family members or supporters can appear in saris, dhotis, Nehru caps, salwar kameez, turbans, bangles or bindis or Brahmanic threads), Jindal has tried to expunge marks of difference that could have made him a more compelling candidate, if he’d galvanized his small but potentially powerful core constituency.

Jindal and his portraits:  Tanned, Rested, and Ready (see his website)

The easiest target of derision has been his self-generated name change.  Jindal was born to immigrant parents who gave him the nice but somewhat unusual name of Piyush, which in Hindi means ‘nectar’ or ‘ambrosia.’  One would guess that the name was meant to convey something like the divinely ratified sweetness of having a boy-child in a new country of unlimited opportunity.  Unfortunately,  to native English speakers, ‘Piyush’ just sounds funny, as it trails homonymic clouds of ‘pee on you’ or vaguely unsavory rhyming chimes like ‘tush,’ ‘mush,’ and ’bush.’  It’s understandable that Jindal as a young boy preferred ‘Bobby’ as a name-of-choice, although its origin—Brady Bunch fandom— does not inspire confidence. ‘Bobby’ also masks the more relevant English homonym of ‘Piyush’: ‘push,’ the verb that even Jindal’s supporters say characterizes his relentless pursuit of the next best/prestigious/challenging thing, the verb that’s propelled the undeniably intelligent and ambitious Governor to peter-principle himself into inevitable failure.

Let’s be fair.  What about other Presidential candidates’ given names, or nicknames?  What do the first names they choose to call themselves suggest?

Somehow I omitted Rick Santorum in my inaugural photo montage.  So here he is, 

plus his fellow 'I'm not a dick.' 

To quote a friend re stupid political stuff in general, beware a Biblical plague of dickheads.  Some of our current Presidential candidates have taken this warning to heart.  The Richards in the field (Santorum, Perry) have wisely preferred the nickname ‘Rick’ to the older nickname of ‘Dick’ (one my late father did not eschew, as he never acknowledged its double-entendre risibility).  ‘Rich’ could have been an alternative, but not a wise one for a political-office seeker in this era of income-inquality consciousness.  Alas, a dickhead by any other name is still a dickhead.

Another name with gender overtones is ‘Lindsey.’  There was a time when gender-neutral names (like Evelyn, Joyce, Francis/Frances, even Hilary) enjoyed some currency on both sides of the X-Y chromosome divide.  Not today (for boy-children, anyway — for years, a healthy number of girl-children in the United States have been gifted with unisex or family names . . . like Taylor or Hadley or Hunter or Clarke, not to mention the fusty names mentioned above).  Senator Graham’s now-coded-feminine first name perhaps unconsciously reinforces the aura of prissiness enwafting this ‘confirmed bachelor.’  His middle name, ‘Olin,’ doesn’t offer many more attractive options.

Omega and Alpha of male monikers?

In contrast, Donald Trump’s first name radiates masculinity: in the original Scots-Gaelic, it means ‘ruler of the world’ and was the name of two 9th-century Pictish kings.  The popularity of the Disney cartoon character Donald Duck diluted the name’s virility to some extent; the Donald seems hell-bent on reclaiming every drop of man-essence from the noble name ‘Domhnall,’ in the process ratifying Jon Stewart’s inspired choice of an alternate appellation for candidate Trump, ‘Fuckface von Clownstick.’ 

Then there are the reduplicatives.  ‘Jeb’ is not short for Jebediah (‘beloved of God’ in Hebrew) but an acronym of 2016 candidate Bush’s actual name:  John Ellis Bush.  I read somewhere that saying ‘Jeb Bush’ is like saying ‘ATM machine’ . . . not an inapt comparison.  Jebush Bush: a covert appeal to rural Southern Republicans for whom ‘Jebus’ is a non-cussing equivalent to Jesus?  ‘Jeb Bush’ is somewhat similar is ‘Chris Christie.’  His name is like Tweeting in all-caps: IF YOU’RE TOO DUMB TO REMEMBER MY NAME I’LL SAY IT TWICE —THEN SIT DOWN, MORON, AND SHUT UP.

Double the pleasure, double the chins?

Other male presidential candidates have ordinary (in the U.S. cultural-linguistic sphere) names ranging from the somewhat old-fashioned (Bernard, George, Martin) to the permanently unobjectionable (Benjamin, John, Michael, James, Scott).  Marginal outliers are ‘Lincoln’ (a nod to an impeccable but now irrelevant Republican pedigree, thus the change to ‘Linc’ and the metric system and the Democratic party) and ‘Randall’ (2016 candidate Paul prefers a Fountainhead-inspired short form rather than the full given name, with its Game-of-Thrones-ish meaning ‘wolf shield’ ).  A fitting companion to ‘wolf shield’ is ‘Marco,’ with its root meaning approximating ‘god of war’s hammer.’  Candidate Rubio wisely has not messed with his first name, as it’s easy to pronounce, similar to the normative Anglo form of Mark, yet retains a whiff of the ‘exotic’ that, he hopes, will appeal to non-Anglo voters. Plus he can hawk ‘Marco Polo’ shirts in his campaign web store.  In contrast, candidate Rafael Edward Cruz has opted for the pugnaciously profane bear-name (or, if we’re being uncharitable, which of course we are, serial-killer name) of ‘Ted.’

Candidates hostage to syllabic harmonies.

Both of the female candidates’ names show vestiges of the rule-of-rhythmic-syllable-distribution that influenced early (white, middle-class) baby-boomer parents’ naming of girl children.  The orthodox rule:  the given, middle, and family names should exhibit, in some order, a one-, two-, and three-syllable word.  I should know: I was christened Deborah (3) Scott (1) Baker (2) and my sister was christened Alison (3) Hobbs (1) Baker (2).  The relaxed rule was that the given and family names should have different syllable counts. Thus we have my age-mates Cara (2) Carleton (soft 3) Sneed (1) and Hillary (3) Diane (well, it’s actually 2, but 1 if you slur a whole lot) Rodham (2).  

Neither woman’s given name has been a predictor of personality (pace Plautus).  ‘Joyful hilarity’ is not exactly what one associates with calculatingly robotic candidate Clinton, and ‘cherished beloved’ does not exactly describe the ruthlessly unsuccessful former Hewlitt-Packard CEO.  That said, candidate Fiorina’s decision to change ‘Cara’ to Carly — a name that begs for a heart-topped letter ‘i’ rather than a ‘y’ — may be an effort to reinforce nominal warm fuzzies.  Hillary Clinton has sensibly left her phonetically lyrical liquids alone.  

Dayum -- what more do you want?  The man can almost sing and govern 

and chew Nicorette at the same time, plus his name sanctifies Nobel Peace Prize objectives.

Jebus knows I’ve probably omitted one or more current Presidential candidates — there are so damned many ( ‘damned’ from the Latin damnare:  ‘ to condemn, judge guilty, blame, reject’).  At this point, I’m not excited about any of them, although a few are more acceptable to this moderately progressive Democrat than are most of the rest. I suspect I remain in thrall to the imperfect but admirable current office holder, whose name ‘Barack’ means ‘blessed’ (with a scary etymological connection to ‘blood sacrifice’ and eventually, via another linguistic route, to ‘wounded,’ as in the French blessé) and whose intelligent, compassionate, morally upright, peace-seeking Presidency may in the future be judged worthy of his given name.  

[Full disclosure note:  my given name, Deborah, is usually linked to the Hebrew for ‘bee.’  But its root cluster (d-b-r) in Semitic languages also means ‘to pronounce, say, reason, judge’ — thus the name for the judge-empress Deborah {Judges 4} who went with General Barak {!!!} against Sisera {commander of Canaanite troops enslaving Israelites: his name incorporates the root s-s, meaning horse, implying [foreign] military force}. The connection between ‘bee’ and ‘judgment’ is speculative, ranging from the metonymical (buzzing, noise, saying) to metaphorical (manna, honey, divine sustenance/wisdom).  Whatever.  I say my name means I can write all the blogs I want and that the judgments contained therein will be sweetly but logically correct.]