On Justin Trudeau: An Autoönomastic Postscript

Yesterday, I described in some detail the unfortunate, even Shandy-esque series of events that led to my being stuck with the name 'Justin'. I mentioned that until the age of eight this had only been my middle name, and that I myself caused it to be moved to the front of the line in consequence of some incomprehensible eight-year-old's caprice that I do not want to detail again here.

What I did not mention is how that name managed to be included among my middle names in the first place. As it happens my father was at the time an attentive follower of local politics throughout all of North America, and though I was born in Reno, Nevada, somehow the news managed to arrive in our high-desert home that some months earlier the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, had had a son, and had named him 'Justin'.

The Washoe County Vital Statistics office will confirm that there were not many children in my cohort to be named after the son of a Canadian prime minister, and I admit it is an obscure choice, but in defense of my father I note that the Trudeaus were widely hailed at the time as 'Canada's Kennedys', and in any case it was at that time only a middle name.

I didn't think much about the significance of this particular namesake until I arrived in Montreal, and noticed that the woman who worked at my neighborhood dry-cleaning establishment could only remember my name by reference to the former prime minister's son. This excited an old memory, and I attempted to explain to her that, even though I am American, it is precisely Justin Trudeau whom I have to thank or to curse for my bearing of that unbearable name to this day.

A few more years passed. The Trudeau family offspring popped up in the Canadian press from time to time... a Timberlake appeared, then a Bieber... Justin Morgan enjoyed almost no notice at all, except as a footnote to the equestrian fantasies of maladapted girls who could not be made to buy into the new, shiny, teen-pop transformation of the 'Justin' brand. I continued to come and go at my place of employment in the centre-ville, and to adapt myself to being addressed, with ever increasing regularity, as 'sir'.

And then one day, as I approached the Guy-Concordia metro station, what did I find but an encampment of purported sidewalk dwellers, sprawled in my path as if they were sans abri, but looking far too middle-class for anyone to believe that they were there of necessity? One of them, I heard the crowd muttering, was none other than the minister of parliament for Papineau, Justin Trudeau, who had taken to the streets to raise awareness of the problem of homelessness. It was his intention to spend the whole night on the sidewalk of the boulevard de Maisonneuve, along with a media crew and a bevvy of fawning supporters. And it was his very feet that were extended across the sidewalk, crosswise, right in my path. It was only 7:30 or so, I note, but the MP seemed ready to just keep lying there, already at this early hour, as if he were getting ready to doze off.

I stepped right over Justin Trudeau's feet, his supposedly homeless feet, and as I was stepping I paused to get a good look at him. Should I tell him he's my namegiver, I wondered? Should I tell him it's his fault I wound up with this ill-fitting moniker? I thought about it, and then I remembered: no, it's not his fault. It's my fault. He's only responsible for the middle name, which is an appropriate level of responsibility, in Nevadan onomastic affairs, for the son of a Canadian prime minister. I'm the one who insisted on promoting him to Prime Moniker, to Chief of Names.

I continued on my way. He, apparently, spent the entire night in that spot: the man after whom I was named... sort of.

Comments

[The Worst of Perth]

Brutal.

[Goldrush]

Had a case with a Justin once. He'd been Troy, but he made the change for branding purposes, to get his practice the echo of Justice.

[Eric]

I know he's suppose to be attractive, but I still think there's something wrong with his face.
Write a new post to push it off the page or whatever the blogjargon is. Please.

And think of "Justin" as "A Man Named Sue" sort of thing except apparently you did it to yourself, if read the previous post correctly.

[Matthew Joseph Michael Martinuk]

Although I think "Matthew" suits me, it too has a somewhat complicated family history. It was one of my father's middle names - Gerald Matthew Myron Martinuk. But as a young man, my father upgraded Myron to first place and dropped "Matthew," becoming Myron Gerald Martinuk, and, I guess, gave me the name when I finally came along.