Further adventures in name- (and also gender-) changing

Christine Elizabeth Terry wants to change her name. So does Daniel Robert Spalding. Christine has asked the court to allow her to be known as Christopher Aaron Terry. While the court is at it, Christine is asking for a decree changing her gender from female to male and that a new birth certificate be issued declaring same. That same day, in the same courtroom and at the same time, Daniel hopes the court will allow him to henceforth be known as Sarah Elizabeth Spalding, legally change his gender from male to female and provide him with a new birth certificate that says Sarah was always a girl named Sarah.

That these two petitions will be heard on the same day may just be coincidence. But I'm kind of hoping that Christine/Christopher and Daniel/Sarah plan to leave the courtroom hand in hand, head straight for for the county clerk's office and plunk down the fee for their marriage license. I'll be watching for the wedding write-up.

Purity polluted

The American League was founded on this date in 1901. Who then could have imagined that, 71 years later, the league's honor and dignity would be tossed onto the trash heap of craven pandering to slugging over strategy when it adopted the designated-hitter rule in 1973. Ben Johnson must have wept in his grave.

What's in a name?

I was perusing the public notices in last night's Davis Enterprise. (You don't read these? Riveting stuff; I recommend them.) Businesses old and new file fictitious business name statements with the county (the Richardson Group/Richardson United is really just Tobin Richardson; a group of one, apparently; and nice to see the Pincushion Boutique is still opening its doors here in Davis.)

But the most fascinating listings are the ones headed "Order to Show Cause for Change of Name." Quite a few people want, or need, to change their names, and to do it legally, they must go to court, get a case number and a hearing date, and run a public notice in the newspaper of record (in Yolo County's case, the aforementioned Enterprise) to alert everybody that, unless someone objects, the bloke they used to know as Joe Smith will hereinafter be known as Joe Jones.

The fun lies in musing on why Joe Smith now wants to be Joe Jones. Last night's paper printed several name changes, and by and large they were pretty straightforward. Joseph Vincent wants to change his name to Joseph Vincent Calabro. Was Calabro a family name that got dropped someplace along the family tree? Maybe Joseph Vincent married someone whose last name is Calabro, and felt the thoughtful gesture would be to tack his spouse's name onto his. Slightly more enigmatic is Earl Thompson's petition to become Ej Thompson. I've never seen "Ej" as a name before and wonder, among other things, how it's pronounced: "Edge," maybe, or perhaps "Eej." "Ej" could be the name of a popular rapper, or have some religious significance. Curious.

What's in a name? Whatever the court decrees.