HOW CARLOS GOT HIS NAME
Carlos is named after Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. How he got his name was a process that was related to his big brother and bears some repeating on this, his birthday.
I don't know why the naming of a male child should be such a larger chore than the naming of a female child, but the naming of my firstborn turned into quite a conundrum.
For both of my children there had been girls' names at the ready, names we both really liked. But all of the male names suggested had reminded me of some negative role model. "No," I would say, "that reminds me of so and so" and the process would begin anew.
Then, Suzanne Thomas suggested "Zachary". Other than an obscure President I didn't know anyone named Zachary. It was all quite perfunctory but it seemed right . "Okay, Zachary it is."
It turned out to be a good choice. And, it seemed to signal a trend of biblical proportions. Zacks and Calebs, Joshes, and Damians soon populated the land. I really loved the name for my first baby.
Fifteen years later, and having another firstborn, I was fully aware of the wholly serendipitous manner in which Zack had been named and became committed to putting some real thought into this child's name.
Again, women's names were no problem. "She" would be "Lily". But a boy's name? What? I balked when "Julian" was seriously suggested. And with all due apologies to my friends and family Julians out there, I thought the name "Too chi-chi". His name must be more, well, relevant. (And it should keep him from getting pummeled on the schoolyard.)
My child would have a Spanish name. Now, I am culturally chauvinistic. As my brother has recently noticed, I have "become" a Puerto Rican. There was something, too, in this conundrum about a name that centered around my childhood guilt and insecurities.
I had hated my own name and culture. As a child I thought my name "weird". It called attention to my ethnicity at a time in my life when I wanted to assimilate. Like most children, I didn't like being different or bringing attention to myself and that's what my name had done.
"Domingo", I would only later find out, is not a weird name, it's just not heard here. "Mohammed" and "Carlos", not "John" are the world's dominant names. But, I had spent my life as "Don" or "Dominick" and would now atone. It was only after I started the web page that I found out that ALL of my cousins have Spanish names. (Duh!)
Had we liked the name "Eugene" that would have been Carlos' name. Eugene Victor Debs, is a fantastic historical and socialist figure, and my mentor. I looked for a name that would follow the formula his parents had used in naming him. Debs was named after Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo, prominent socially conscious authors of his time. Our child's name should be relevant to this century and to Hispanic culture.
Domingo de Soto was the confessor of Carlos V of Spain. He was, along with Bartholome de las Casas, one of the champions of human rights for the indigenous peoples of the New World. It seemed like a great irony.
At about the same time that we were trying to find a name for "Julian", I was trying the federal case of Alfredo Garcia, a wonderful man who found himself in an Orwellian drama far from his native Bolivia. We became good friends. His thoughts and his poetry, which he wrote under the nom de plume of "Carlos", he shared with me.
The judge trying the case was named Charles. What else could this child be called? From the choice of Carlos it followed, naturally, that he would be named after Fuentes, a person both Kathryn and I admire greatly. And, Garcia Marquez? Why not be named after the two greatest Latin authors? The choices aligned themselves. And so, on January 11, Carlos Gabriel Soto was born.
