Names

Someone, I think it was Martin Amis, once said that you can judge a novelist by how much effort he puts into his characters’ names. If that’s true, a political independent who grew up in the 1990s with the name “Matt Purple” may be a sign of some cosmic writerly laziness. Yes, that is my real name. The one you see in the byline there. I’m always amazed at how many people assume it’s a nom de plume, as though if I could have any last name I wanted I’d choose an Easter color. I actually did write an essay under a pseudonym once: “Matt Thomas,” Thomas being my middle name. Given that it was instantly posted to the top of a prominent website and discussed on a national radio show, I sometimes wonder whether I’m the victim of nomenclature discrimination.

I used to have a cantankerous old relative who hewed to generalizations drawn from long experience. One of them concerned people named “Adam.” On a Sunday morning twenty years ago, as we sat around reading the papers, I mentioned Adam Sandler — or maybe it was Adam West or Adam Vinatieri. “All Adams are assholes,” he grumbled. “You ever notice that?” I tried to respond with some piety about how these people were not to blame for being called Adam. But I had a nagging sense that that was not how the Wheel of Onomastic Destiny spun. I had spent much of my adult life looking for heroic qualities in people bearing my own middle name, which is Scott. Even before I was fully emerged from childhood, Scott had acquired a bad name.