Something Else That Pisses Me Off — People With One Name

By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
Not unexpectedly, I’ve run across something else that pisses me off and makes me want to start shouting at my TV, again. And I don’t mean because of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
When I’m upset with Mr. Ego, which is about as often as a good Muslim prays to Mecca, I shout at the nine-inch statue of him that I’ve installed in the little alcove next to my bathroom.
I’m sorry (well, I’m not really sorry), but people who try to get away with having only one name are really starting to tick me off.
Normal people have at least two names. Some people — James Earl Jones, Martin Luther King, John Wilkes Booth — have three. Occasionally, we even run into people with four names! I can’t think of one right now, but I know they’re out there. Wait, Lord Alfred North Whitehead. That’s four, right? “Lord” counts as a name, doesn’t it? Well, if not at least it’s close. Anyway . . . .
Now, with apparent increasing frequency, fancy-pants types are popping up thinking that they can get by with having only one name, like they’re soooo terrific that if you just say that one name everybody will know that you mean them.
OK, some people can pull that off the one-name thing, Hitler, Einstein, but even then we still only know them by their last name, and a unique last name at that. It’s not like you see many Hitlers running around.
OK, fine, Napoleon, yes, that was his first name, but you still have to admit that’s a pretty unique first name. Again, there aren’t many kids named “Napoleon” out there on the playground. But, hey, at least he killed tens of thousands of people by the time he got done. Maybe more.
That has to count for something. Napoleon earned the right to identify himself with just his first name. You take over France and start a couple of major wars and you can use just your first name too.
But that’s not who the one-name wannabe’s are today. Cher, Prince, Seal. Seal? Really?
Have any of these people started a major war? Led armies into battle? Solved the mysteries of universe? I don’t even know what this Seal character does.
Does he sing? Dance? Isn’t the world already full up with singers and dancers? Jeez, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting somebody who claims to be a singer or a dancer.
Stalin had to enslave almost an entire continent before he got to use only one name, and this guy, Seal, thinks he deserves to be up there in the one-name-only ranks with Papa Joe? Come on!
My name is “Dave.” Any minute now I expect some poser to try to appropriate my name. What if some clog-dancer or free-throw artist named David Somethingorother decides that from now on his entire name is going to be just “Dave”?
“And the special guest on our show tonight will be Dave.”
And they’ll mean him, not me. That just isn’t fair. I feel like these people are cutting in line, jumping ahead of all of us normal, hardworking citizens and, in some off moment when we’re not looking, stealing our names!
Well, I don’t like it and as far as I’m concerned this single name stuff has got to stop. So, here and now, I am proposing the formation of the Single Name Approval Commission — SNAC.
If you think you’re worthy of being identified by only one name you’ll first have to submit an application to SNAC. And, you’ll have to meet the SNAC qualification standards, which will be pretty rigorous, let me tell you.
You’ll have to have done something really, really big. Like I said, start a major war, revolutionize a culture, enslave a whole country, and not some punk-ass little nothing country either. Being the despot of Liechtenstein won’t cut it with SNAC.
You’re going to have to at least discover something really important like the secret to faster-than-light travel or a diet pill that really, really works.
There would be one exemption to the requirement for approval by SNAC, namely, a single name that is both unique and also contains at least seven letters and numbers, like RJ47B15. Think of it more like a serial number. Your serial number.
You would still have to register your name/serial number with SNAC to make sure that no two people had the same one. Yes, somebody else could register RJ47B16, which, I admit, would be close, but not identical.
That only seems fair to me.
But as for this Beyonce, Seal, Prince stuff, it has to stop right now, before somebody tries to grab up “Dave.” That would just be way too much for me to bear.
— David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)

