A Boy Called Jamie

Everyone called me Jamie until I was 5-years-old. I think I was thinking at the time that ‘Jamie’ was not sufficiently masculine. This seems strange because I don’t remember myself as being overly macho. I didn’t play with G.I. Joe and the most dangerous weapon in my juvenile arsenal was the gun formed by my thumb and forefinger. Many pictures from this time show me with a dorky smile, hunched down by a group of cats who are ignoring me as they devour the latest pile of table scraps.
Another picture, taken on the first day of kindergarten, has me wearing white, red, blue, pink, green, and orange pin-stripped, homemade nylon pants. I would love to have such pants now; but I wanted wear them to a gang meeting.

Amazingly, I never thought of my name as common. In fact, when I was growing up, I was glad that I had an UN-common name! I guess this is testimony to the fact that a person can wear thick blinders to the obvious when something personal is involved. How I could delude myself in this manner is difficult to comprehend. First of all, in my 20-person class at a rural school in Iowa, no less than three of us were named James. One of us called himself Jimmy until he, too, had a burst personal masculinity at puberty (don’t we all) and exerted his right to be Jim. Moreover, James is not only one of the most common names in the country, it is THE MOST COMMON first name.

James is not only common in the United States, it is one of the 10 most popular names in New Zealand (2), British Columbia (3), Ireland (5), Australia (7), Great Britain (9). Internationally, the only savior of my name is Russian. Russian does not have a single letter for the sound of a J. Therefore, my name begins with a D, represented by the stylish, Д, followed by an even classier letter that corresponds to the sound of Z in the word azure ( Ж ). What's more, the long A sound in Russian is written with two letters, ( EЙ ). So my frumpy little James becomes Джеймс. The name in Russian looks LESS formal only in the final letter because it changes from the groovy-looking S to a more simple C. Not only does it look more elegant, but the sound is cool, too. At parties, when my male Russian friends call my name, I get the feeling that they love to force out with gusto the first two sounds with a burst of air and spit accompanied by breadcrumbs and vodka.

I don't mean to pretend that my name is anything but pleasing to me. At some point growing up, I realized that my dad and I have our first and middle names reversed. He is Robert James Martin; I am James Robert Martin. I enjoy the closest thing to being named after him while avoiding the confusion.
-- Jim Bob