I’m pleased to announce that everyone we’ve heard back from has loved the name Isadora Elliott Harris.
The only criticism leveled was that Elliott is a boy’s name, and it only came, ironically, from my friend Keith. Keith is also the name of Rick McKay’s longtime friend and bassist Mark’s wife. And she, the woman Keith, is fabulous both in personality and appearance, clearly suffering no worse effects of her name than had Keith, the man.
Outside of that lonely criticism, people were generally curious about how we arrived at such a powerful yet approachable name. Well, it happened like this:
When Wendy and I were first discussing names, before we’d determined the sex of our child, we’d chosen the name Elliott for a boy. Much of the decision was basically aesthetic, but the name’s spelling belies the original inspiration: Elliott Smith. Elliott Smith has been one of my favorite songwriters since before the time Wendy and I met, when I invited her to two of his performances, through the time of his death in 2003 up to and through the present. The only rules I was operating under in choosing a name were that either the first initial or name itself came from someone who had influenced us and was no longer living. Check and check.
Isadora was an outgrowth of Isabella, which we were considering until we realized how popular a name it had become, one of the top 10 names for the last three years running. While we were still tossing around other names, we walked by Isadora Duncan alley just down the block from our Apartment. It leapt off the sign. Not only was Isadora Duncan born local to this neighborhood which has become more my and Wendy’s home than anywhere we’d lived before we met, Â Isadora Duncan lived a life, similar to Elliott Smith, of great self expression. In fact, she revolutionized an art form that had become very mechanical with a whole new level of humanness–a quality Elliott Smith brought to every song he performed during a time much of modern music was suffering the same kind of spirit crushing mechanization.
Unfortunately, like Elliott Smith, Isadora Ducan died prematurely under incredible circumstances. But here, again, aesthetics won us over. Isadora Elliott struck us as a wonderful name, a name combining two great artists and two people who lived and died with great self-expression. Anyone who knows me knows how important–how downright necessary–it is for me to feel free to express myself and to do so at every opportunity. Between a long life and a life of great self-expression, it’s a no brainer for me.
In the end, however, a name is neither a blessing nor a curse. Not everyone named Abraham is destined to help free a people, nor are they doomed to be shot in a theatre. What people are coexists with their name, and how people are impressed by names is a result of the individuals wearing it as much as its sound or anything else.
Isadora Elliott ultimately shows her (and those who meet her) a bit about us, her folks; that we’d be as impressed by a young songwriter as the creator of modern dance as anyone else. But like my name, Mitchell Sanford Harris, and Wendy’s, Wendy Leone Guthrie, names which were essentially drawn from thin air–it sounds good and is easy to say. And in the end, that’s what a name is for. Like the names Kirby and Murky. They just fit.
