Monday, November 12, 2007

What's in a name?

To his family he was 'Jamie' (often prefaced with 'Uncle' by one of the throngs of adoring nieces & nephews).

And to his sisters, more often than not, it was 'That Jamie!', said with a combination of exasperation & perverse pride as we waited for him to arrive for some family event.

To my late brother-in-law's co-workers, as this memorial plaque attests to, he was 'James'.

To his hockey team-mates, he was 'Murray'.

And to his wife Christine he was 'Pooks' (which I still find vaguely disturbing).

There are any number of possibilities for trite identity analogies involving personnas and identifiers - the type of superficial analogy I normally find irresistible.

I'll take a pass just this once.

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