I hate my name.
I mean, who but my dear mother would name a helpless, defenseless baby “Benny?” Think about it: How many Benny’s have you known in your life? Benny Hill, the comedian; Benny Hinn, the evangelist; Benny Goodman, the clarinet player; Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets” – other than a few marginal celebrities, I bet you can’t name three. As far as that goes, only one out of every 11,930 babies born in 2019 in the United States was named “Benny.” When I was a kid, I passed myself off as “Ben,” but when I went into the service, they insisted on calling me by my given name. The authorities would call out for “Benny” at musters, and I wouldn’t answer; at least not until I figured out they were turning me in as “absent.”
The only place I’ve ever been where “Benny” is a common name is the Philippines (PI), and that’s because it’s such a religious country, with the majority of the population being Roman Catholic. Of course, there’s a huge Muslim population down in the southern islands. Benny is popular in the PI because it’s associated with the 6th-century Italian saint, Benedict of Nursia, who founded the Benedictine monastic order of monks and nuns. “Benedictus” in Latin also means “blessed.” In Hebrew, Benny is a diminutive of Benjamin and means “Son of the Right Hand.”
So, Benny it has been and Benny it is. Whatever your name is, embrace it. Names help determine who we are. Psychologists tell us that the name we love to hear the most is our own. After that, it’s the name of the person we love more than anyone else. Over the years, I’ve delivered hundreds of death notices; that is, I had to tell someone that a person close to them had died, and quite often, the recipient of the bad news, while sad, would express relief that it wasn’t the name of someone even closer. But sometimes, names are overrated, fickle things. The poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, perhaps put it best when he said:
I won a noble fame,
But with a sudden frown,
The people snatched my crown,
And in the mire, trod down,
My lofty name.
And how many times have you heard: “Fool’s names, like fool’s faces, are often seen in public places?” Shakespeare also said in “Romeo and Juliet,” “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” And the obsession with names is not peculiar to humans. As C. S. Lewis said in “The Naming of Cats:” “When you notice a cat in profound meditation, the reason, I tell you is always the same: his mind is engaged in rapt contemplation of the thought, of the thought of his name, his ineffable, deep and inscrutable Name.”
I suppose it’s not unique to be unhappy with your name. We have all heard of the troubles of the “Boy Named Sue” who wanted to change his name. I’ve been on several ships where sailors asked me to help them legally change their names, including an officer who got tired of being called “Mr. Gross,” his surname, but I managed to talk most of them out of it. Even the famous entertainer, “Prince,” whose tragic and premature death at 57 dismayed his many fans, at one time decided to be known as “TAFKAP,” or “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”
A few American companies have also learned some hard lessons about names – specifically, the danger of literal translations of brand names and slogans into foreign languages. General Motors is a case in point. Back in the 1960s, they had a difficult time selling their new compact car, the Chevrolet Nova, in Latin American countries because “no va” in Spanish means “no go.”
Would you buy a car that wouldn’t go? Pepsi also had its own problems in Asia. When I was in Thailand, I was told that the slogan, “Come alive, you are in the Pepsi Generation,” means “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead,” when translated literally into some minority Thai languages. I don’t know if that’s true, but you get the point. Names are important. How many mothers name their sons “Judas,” for example? I once conducted a seminar at the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton, California, and I had an attendee named “Sir Walter Raleigh.” I didn’t know whether to call him “Sir,” “Walter,” or “Sir Walter,” so I just called him “Buddy.”
While the meaning or import of our personal names is intriguing, it is also very interesting to think about the derivation of the names of the towns and communities covered by this newspaper. An etymologist, or someone who studies the source, or history, of words, would tell us that, at least in the English language, people in medieval times often took their last name from their professions: Miller, Carpenter, Sawyer, Cooper (barrel maker), Butler, Smith, etc. Local place names, on the other hand, have many origins.
It may be a geographic feature, such as the famous healing waters of Rawls Springs, which once boasted a large hotel where the sick came to be cured; a foreign term such as “Bon Homme,” or French for “good man,” which includes the area where William Carey University now stands; or an eponym, a word recalling a famous person – such as Seneca, the small German-Roman Catholic community just north of Lumberton, which is named after the famous Roman statesman and orator. Closer to Hattiesburg, Palmer’s Crossing was originally a community known as “Palmer,” founded by a local judge.
In our area, we also have many Native American-inspired place names: Oklahola, just south of Oak Grove (where there are still some Indian mounds along the banks of Black Creek); Talawah, south of Purvis; Kokomo, out from Columbia (not a Choctaw word, but from Chief “Ma-Ko-Ko-Mo,” a member of the Miami tribe, for whom Kokomo, Indiana, was named. His name translated to “Black Walnut.”). I guess you could make a case that Seneca is named after the famous Iroquois tribe of upstate New York. One of their most famous leaders was “Handsome Lake,” who was probably a nicer fellow than his contemporary and fellow tribe member, “Black Snake.”
I was raised in Piatonia, another Choctaw word (Pytonah), which is where the train stopped until the station was moved one mile south to Lumberton in the 1880s. Local legend says that a large Indian village was once located on the hill where the Lumberton City Hall now stands. As a matter of fact, it was the railroads that often arbitrarily gave names to the little whistle stops where they took on wood and water. Often, the names stuck. The man who named Hattiesburg, William Harris Hardy, was a railroad man, and he re-named the pre-existing settlement (Twin Forks, and the earlier Gordonsville) after his wife, Hattie. He was also a co-founder of the city of Gulfport, and there is a nice statue honoring him in the rose garden by the Gulfport City Hall.
Whatever the source, we have some colorful place names in our area. For example, we don’t have a Sunflower, a Cotton Plant, or a Morning Star as they do in the Mississippi Delta; but we do have a Caesar, a Napoleon, and a Seneca. Unlike other parts of the state, we don’t have a Black Hawk, a Green Pond, or a Blue Mountain; but we do have a Red Top, a White Bluff, and a Sand Hill. We aren’t blessed with a Hog Chain, a Rolling Fork, or a King Bee; but thankfully, we have a Flat Top, a Sandy Hook, and a Byrd Line. You can look hard, but you won’t find a Cuba, a Carolina, a Troy, a Moscow, an Ireland, or a Little Texas (all obscure Mississippi place names), but you will find a Macedonia, a Palestine, and a Brooklyn in our reading area.
All in all, there are at least 221 recorded place names in the six counties surrounding Hattiesburg. Let’s look at just a few of the more well-known ones. Columbia, in Marion County, for example, briefly served as the state capitol in 1821, and was a thriving port on the Pearl River. I’ve read that the main street was once a canal. Like 49 other cities in the United States, Columbia is named in honor of Christopher Columbus, the erstwhile discoverer of America. On Highway 13, between Columbia and Baxterville, is the community of Hub. One story says that a ford in the Pearl River near there was so shallow that water only came up to the hubs of wagon wheels. Not far away, of course, is the Ford House, which is supposedly the oldest house in the southern Mississippi valley.
Contrary to what many think, Will Purvis was not the founder of Purvis. His uncle was. Will, who was from Harmony, a logging community on a dummy rail line south of Purvis, was falsely convicted of murder in 1910 and taken to Columbia to be hanged. When the trap door dropped, the noose slipped, and Purvis fell to the ground unharmed. The sheriff wanted to hang him again, but a preacher in the crowd insisted his deliverance was an “act of God,” and the hostile crowd agreed. He was sent to Parchman for life instead. Fifteen years later, a man on his deathbed in Oloh confessed to the crime. Will was paid $5,000 for his false imprisonment. Sounds like the inspiration for a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Oak Grove is named for a stand of oak trees in the area of the old high school, now the junior high. Its most famous moment was on 27 October 1959, when a B-58 Hustler strategic bomber crashed in the area and the civilian Convair flight engineer’s parachute failed to open. Luckily, the plane wasn’t carrying any nukes. This accident gave rise to the occasional ghost story that you hear about the Lake Serene area.
Over the years, I noticed that sailors would informally rename their ships to fit their personalities. And ships, although made of cold, hard steel, definitely do have “personalities.” They have “karma,” both good and bad. For example, I served in (you are always “in” a ship, never “on” it; and never a “boat,” unless it’s a submarine) the USS Herbert R. Calcaterra (DER-390), an old-World War II-era destroyer escort out of Newport, Rhode Island, for two years, going on a lifetime. Private Calcaterra was a brave Marine who died heroically on Iwo Jima, but his namesake was a nightmare in 1963: worn out, smelly, slow, and cold. During two Med cruises, I never heard anyone call it anything but the “Dirty Herby.” On the other hand, I spent three years in the Battleship New Jersey. That ship put out some positive energy. No one but “boots” called it the “New Jersey.” If you had been onboard more than a week, you called it the “Big J,” and you loved it.
Personally, I’ve always thought that a great ship’s name would be “Penelope,” who, you will remember, was the long-suffering but ever-faithful wife of Odysseus, the sea-going hero of Homer’s epic poem, “The Odyssey.” The British Navy once had a frigate with that name. And, in my opinion, the British have always had the corner on the best ship’s names.
In various ports around the world, I’ve seen HMS (Her Majesty’s Ship) Hotspur (Remember your Shakespeare?), Daffodil, and Revenge. When I was 17, and serving in USS Springfield (CLG-7), a light guided missile cruiser (named after Springfield, Massachusetts, home of the Springfield Rifle) then homeported in Villefranche sur Mer, France, I remember tying up in Gibraltar alongside HMS Battle Axe. Now that’s a name a person would be proud to associate with – “Benny from the Battle Axe.” I would answer up at a roll call for that one. Cast off all lines!
Light a candle for me.
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
