Name Calling

My husband reminded me that I had had my children's real names on the blog. Cautious as he is, I relented and went back and changed them, because, well it gave me another reason to write.

In the Adventure Guides, children and parents become someone else. They choose a very special name, name themselves, and has been in my case, name their parents. In a spiritual sense, you are supposed to Leave Behind your Other Self and Become the Adventure Guide... it's rooted in the Native American history of the program, which is very interesting. You should check out the national YMCA link on this page.

In general, due to the Native American  origins, there has been traditional names of tribes (Blackfoot, Pawnee, etc) and persons (Big Chief, Little River, etc). Over time, the Indian Guides (as it was once known) became the Adventure Guides. According to political gossip, its change is pinpointed to a time when somewhere on the East Coast, a group of Indian Guides wore war paint and whooped it up during a parade, alarming and insulting the Native Americans who viewed this. Honestly, I'm glad it changed over to Adventure Guides. The name speaks more accurately of the purpose of the program and is more cross cultural, therefore, acceptable to me.
Who, if they are Chinese, wants to be part of an "Indian" club? I believe even Native Americans don't like that term "Indian". In fact, speaking of accuracy, Indians should correctly refer to East Indians. I like how one of our current father-daughter tribes put it, when he showed me a special design he was making for a patch: a shadow of a dancing girl. When queried by the patch company, why black (the shadow)? He replies, there are so many persons of color in our tribe, we use the shadow to represent everyone, no one gets left out. I like how he did that.

Enter modern times and modern creativity. Tribe names have blossomed into Pacific Frontiersman (I like the frontier, rugged image), Dancing Sunshine (a father-daughter tribe) and Dancing Barbies (you guessed it... a father-daughter tribe). There are others. Somehow we cannot rid ourselves of callng ourselves "tribes", but no matter. Technically, a tribe is not necessarily Native American as you can be an African Bushman and have a tribe.

Children and parent names have also been creative. If you remember Man of the House starring Chevy Chase, names like "Spotted Feather" and "Squatting Dog" might come to mind. Some of the parent-children get a little creative: Sunshine and Moonshine (Guess who the parent is) or sentimental, Sheltering Aerie (parent of a Soaring Eagle) or risky: Sinking Stone (my son named me this. I think he overhead my opinion on camping, early in the program). Yes, there is a Running Bare. He's a wonderful dad to his daughter. Halfway into the program, my son renamed himself Little Puffin, because he admired the gentle and fun Dances with Penguins, a former Federation Captain (Big Honcho of the Program). I once again allowed him to name me... Big Puffin. You can only imagine the "Puffin" jokes that abounded. What you puffin? Who's puffin? my daughter is Powder Puff and my husband is Puff Daddy, etc. I would like amend he named me Big in the sense of Spirit and Intelligence.

So anyway, that's why there are so many interesting names in these articles. I can call a spade a a spade, but not if he's Johnny Walking, or Loose Goose or Shimmering Delight.