What's In A Name?

Not enough and too much, apparently

When I was born, my parents (my mother, really) decided to give me the name Caron: Caron Lon Steiner. A baby boy in 1954 Brooklyn named Caron.

This caused no end of misery throughout my childhood. Outside of school, most people called me Cary, which suited me fine. But in school, which is where I, of course, spent most of my time, the teachers called me Caron and the kids at P.S. 215 picked up on it quickly.

Not me, just an AI-genreated mugshot

Third grade: “Caron? I thought you were a boy!”

Sixth grade: “Whuddaryoo, a faggit with that name?”

It was tough going. And in Junior High, it got much worse.

Why am I named Caron?

There is a diacritical mark called a caron that looks like this:

It’s the rabbit ears at the top. The circle is where the letter goes. This has nothing to do with my name; I just found it interesting.

My name is a portmanteau, which the dictionary tells me is a large suitcase with a hinge in the middle that can hold equal amounts of luggage in its two storage compartments.

That made no sense, so I went to the next definition. Portmanteau: a word that combines the form and meaning of two or more other words; a blend. Ah, there we go. You see, I had two grandfathers who were both alive at the time of my birth: Carl was my dad’s father, and Aron was my mom’s father. So, Caron. “Wait a minute,” you might say, “you’re an Ashkenaz Jew. Aren’t you supposed to be named after a dead relative?” Well, yes. But there is a Sephardic branch in our family tree, and Sephardim don’t have that restriction. Mom decided for the purpose of giving me a ‘clever’ name we were suddenly Sephardic.

I don’t think she meant to be cruel . When I was in High School, I asked her why she burdened me with that name. “I thought it would be a beautiful name if you became a poet. And if you became a truck driver, you’d have to learn to fight.” I started writing poetry.

My brothers, who are younger than I, have normal names: Brandon and Adam. I guess Mom just had one bullet in the silly-name gun.

I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with my name all my life. There was a period of time when I wore it proudly: “Yeah, it’s Caron. What about it?” Or when some clown would say, “Isn’t Caron a girl’s name?” I would answer, “No, it’s mine.”

Things got more polite when I got to college and beyond, but there has still been the raised eyebrow or the clearing of the throat followed by “How do you pronounce that?” I answer, “Caron. Like Karen, only masculine.” Some people assume it’s Ca-RON, but it isn’t. For a short time, I toyed with the idea of pronouncing it Carón, with a Spanish lilt. But when I lived in Southern California, one guy laughed and called me ‘cabrón,’ which was not a name I wanted.

When I started writing this Substack, I decided to go with my initials. It seemed less cumbersome than Caron and more writerly, less frivolous than ‘Cary.’

You can call me what you like: Caron, Cary, C.L. My Hebrew name is Aharon, and my Guru gave me the name Chirag, which means “Source of Light.”

(Transylvanian accent) I am known by many names.

As the saying goes, call me anything but late for dinner. Or cabrón.