What's in a Name?

Last Sunday in church we gave a name and blessing to Miles Elliott Tanner.* In honor of the occasion I thought I would break down each part of our son's name:

Miles

When we first found out that Amy was pregnant, the first names generated during our brainstorming sessions were mostly bizarre joke names.** I chipped in "Intergalactic" because a) it's just an awesome word, b) it has cool associations, c) it's gender-neutral, and d) he/she'd have been the only kid in his school with the name (presumably). The name stuck, and we consistently called our little fetus Intergalactic.  

When it came time to pick a real name, Amy and I both liked the idea of a traditional, somewhat old-fashioned name that didn't sound too antiquated (no Ebenezers, thank you) or overused. As we read through lists of names along those lines, "Miles" immediately jumped out at both of us. As his due date came closer we both found ourselves calling our fetus "Miles" instead of "Intergalactic," and it felt right so we stuck with it.

You'd think that as a musician my first association with "Miles" would've been Miles Davis, but the first thing that popped into my head when I heard the name was Gordon and Olivia's adopted son Miles on Sesame Street. (I know that will come as a shock to regular readers of my blog.) However, in my defense as a musician I very quickly thought of the spooky tenor aria "Miles!" from Benjamin Britten's opera version of The Turn of the Screw.

Several people have asked us if Miles is a family name. At the time we decided the name we knew of no family members with that name. However, Amy and I went to the Mormon Battalion museum in San Diego on the 4th of July and learned that our Miles had a distant relative (an uncle 7 generations back - I don't know what you would call that) in the Mormon Battalion named Albert Miles Tanner. So I suppose it is inadvertently something of a family name.

Elliott

Elliott, on the other hand, is very much a family name. Miles' great grandfather (my mom's father) was Elliott Greene Lupton. My mom's middle name is Elliott. She had a brother whose first name was Elliott, but he died unexpectedly while he was still a baby in the hospital (today it probably would have been diagnosed as SIDS). My only cousin on my mom's side has the middle name of Elliott.

Because of all the family connections it has always been a very dear name to me, and I always wanted to name my first son Elliott. When my sisters started having babies I asked them to reserve the name Elliott for me. However, about a year before Amy and I were married her brother and sister-in-law named their daughter Elliott, so it became unavailable as a first name.

But I like it as a middle name, and I think it flows well with Miles. Say it alound: "Miles Elliott." It's very mellifluous, methinks. And it also happens to be the name of the protagonist of a film that both Amy and I cherish.

Tanner

Quick Tanner family history: My great-great-great-great-grandfather was John Tanner, an enormously wealthy landowner in Bolton Landing, New York (I described my visit to his his house, now a defunct bed and breakfast, in this 2008 blog post). He met the Mormon missionaries in 1832, who healed his gangrenous leg before his baptism. He then sold all of his land and went to join the community of Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio, arriving just in time to make a payment on the temple grounds before they were seized from the church. Over the years he gave his entire fortune to keep to the LDS Church financially afloat in its infancy. Joseph Smith himself promised John Tanner that his family "would never want bread." (This story is glossily and sentimentally told in the 20 minute film Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story.)

John Tanner's sons were involved in some of the formative activities of the early Mormon church; aside from the aforemention Albert Miles in the Mormon Battalion, John's two sons Nathan (ancestor of the N. Eldon Tanner, former member of the Church's first presidency and the namesake of BYU's business building where I have all my MBA classes) and John Joshua were members of Zion's Camp. John Joshua is my branch of the Tanner family tree.

Jumping ahead a few generations, my grandfather was Merlynn (pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, "mer-LYNN") M. Tanner. He had six children and seventeen grandchildren. Of those seventeen grandchildren, only two are boys with the Tanner last name, including me. Consequentially, there has been a lot of pressure on the two of us to extend the proud Tanner name into the next generation. The other Tanner grandson has had three children so far, all of whom are girls.

At my sister Amy's wedding right after I got home from my mission, my Grandpa put a firm hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said sternly, "You're next." Whenever I visited Grandma and Grandpa Tanner in the last few years of their lives they always expressed some variation on the idea that they had lived a full life and were very happy, but that 90+ years was a long time to be alive and they were ready to go.*** However, I always got the vague sense that my Grandpa in particular was trying to hang on long enough to finally see the proud Tanner name continue.

Though he wasn't able to be here in person for the Miles' birth and blessing, Grandpa Tanner can finally rest assured that the Tanner name will continue for at least another generation.

Miles at one month, two months, and three months

* If any readers are unfamiliar with this practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this Wikipedia article is actually quite accurate. This post contains several Mormon inside references, so I've included links that will hopefully demystify said references.

**Actually, the first name that I threw into the ring was Conrad. Amy, however, shot it down quickly because she didn't want to name her child after my Nintendo. I had a different take - the fact that I named my Nintendo Conrad when I was 9 is indisputable evidence that I have loved that name for a long time.

*** Here is my to Grandpa Tanner after his funeral and my tribute to Grandma Tanner just before hers. I think they are two of the loveliest things I have published here.