What's in a Name?

When I set out to create a blog, I didn't realize that the hardest part would be coming up with a name. Actually, I needed three names to get started: my username for signing my posts, my url by which others would be able to find me on the web, and the title of the blog itself.

The first came fairly easily. I just shortened my first and last name, put them together, took a little poetic license with the last syllable, and voila! Valhellah, deliciously close to Valhalla. Not that I'm a fan of Norse mythology or of Richard Wagner (though the ride of the Valkyries as they escort the slain warriors into Valhalla is, to say the least, a catchy tune)...I just liked the way it sounded. Despite my past as an English teacher -- and all high school students will tell you that English teachers live for finding hidden meanings in things -- no symbolism intended.

Finding an unclaimed url proved a bit more challenging. I came up with a whole page of possibilities in my notebook, checking each for availability as I went. Among those already taken: WhatSheSaid, LivingOutLoud, ItsMyVoice, OnPurpose, SottoVoce, Valerieana (sorry, mom), and PenIsMightier (open to misinterpretation when written all lower case anyway). Among the finalists in the available column: OnceMoreWithVoice (just too long), Valerini (what my quartet-mates have dubbed me), ThoughtRamblings (the journal writing we used to do in elementary school), PurposeQueen (a nickname bestowed upon me by co-teachers of a summer workshop), BentPinkies (for those who have seen my hands), and the eventual winner, VIsForVoice (easy and memorable in an acrostic sort of way).

I returned to my list of possible url's as I searched for a name for the blog. In the end, it came down to two choices. The runner-up was It's a Passion, a tribute to my love of writing and the title of a favorite Luka Bloom song. But the winner (at least for now) was Herding Commas. Why? It's what writing feels like some days -- when the words all want to come out at once in a big uncontrolled stream (or spew if you want a more vulgar image), or when they don't want to fall in line in neatly organized sentences, or when they ramble on for half a page taking all sorts of detours and digressions (much like this one) before finally arriving at a point or at least coming to a full stop at a period.

Herding Commas seemed to me more memorable and eye-catching than the other possiblities. It struck me as more original, even though it's a variation on "herding cats" (an expression best illustrated by some company's Super Bowl commercial several years ago), an activity which is acknowledged by most to be a futile pursuit, or at least a highly challenging one, as cats are not, by personality, as agreeable as cows when it comes to doing anything on your schedule. It's a lot like writing that way -- the words don't necessarily come when you're sitting with notebook in lap, pen in hand, or in the case of a blog, with fingers poised over the keyboard and eyes fixed on the monitor. No, words usually come at a more inconvenient moment -- when you're driving down the interstate or in the middle of Sunday's sermon or halfway through a long, relaxing soak in the tub -- bad times for writing, all.

Commas, like cats, are notoriously evasive when it comes to following any sort of fixed rules. They never made sense to the majority of my students, and they only began to make sense to me after some sort of comma epiphany I had sometime during my eleventh grade year, no thanks to my tenth grade English teacher's propensity to read to us from the dreaded light blue Warriner's Grammar book every day.

In the throes of first love (or perhaps just good old teenaged infatuation), Juliet asks, "What's in a name?" (Can't help it...English teacher, remember?) And she goes on to propose that a rose by any other name "would smell as sweet." By her reasoning, I've given entirely too much thought and significance to the task of giving names to things which would exist just the same regardless of what I decided to call them. Maybe so, but at least I had some fun along the way.