liam juhn

Pictured here, at two days-old, is Liam Juhn Carver.

The process by which Jon and Janine Carver went about naming the lad is, itself, an exercise in mophunquisness. For the record, Jon wanted to name him Zod (after General Zod from Superman comics) who, according to Wikipedia, was rated by Wizard magazine as the 58th greatest villian of all time.

Zod is the kind of guy you want leading the team, spear-heading the initiative, etc... in short, Zod would be sought-after in business and social circles. By name alone, he would need to be factored into the equation, accounted for in advance... All hail Zod!... or so Jon's argument for the name went.

Janine, to her credit, put her foot down. She wanted their son's name to be a product of their collaboration. She agreed to Liam, from what I understand, because her surname "Li" could be found therein. I like to think her reasoning here was since she took Carv's surname in marriage, it would be nice to have their son's first name include the surname she gave up. So, in effect, by choosing the name Liam, Jon and Janine creatively compromised around the phallocentric tradition of the wife abandoning her surname for her husband's.

Liam's middle name, Juhn, typifies this compromise. It's parts of his father's (John) and her father's (Jun) names spliced together.

I suspect that when Liam gets a little older, he'll think it was pretty cool that his dad initially wanted to name him after the 58th greatest villian of all time. However, as he grows up, I'm sure he'll come to appreciate the collaborative effort behind his name even more.

And if he absolutely wants some bad-assitude to his name, Liam can tell people his middle name is spelled "Jhun" instead of Juhn, and thereby claim it was inspired by this character from the King of Fighters video game, pictured here.

He's got feet and fists of fury, and with a father whose as big a video game fan as Carv, no one would doubt him for a minute. All hail Liam Juhn!