Mark Smith - Elaine Abery

My name was Mark Smith. Mark Smith! Did my parents have no imagination? No time for me? For crying out loud – they must have know that I was coming for months beforehand. Mark bloody Smith. Boring. Mundane. The boringness of it like a vortex, sucking the life and creativity out of everything in a hectare radius.

Who the hell names their kid Mark boring Smith?

As a late teenager, I worked for a bloke who had worked in the registry office. He complained of the hard-to-spell, hard-to-enunciate “fluffy fairy” names he came across.

You don’t know how lucky you are to have a good, simple name, Mark Smith as his stories sent my subconscious wildly roaming the hidden delights of name paths.

Some people even give their kids completely made-up surnames. Can you imagine it? Your parents with a different surname to yours? How would you ever feel like you belonged anywhere?

Johnno! Johnno!

Yes. I can still see his face now. I so enjoyed the colourful images brought to mind by his rants about exciting names that I rarely interrupted him. Only when it was important.

You don’t need to have the same surname as your dad?

Nah, young fella. Law says you can make up any surname you want for your kids.

The possibilities! I didn’t dare even dream. My dad would have belted me into next year with the buckle end of his belt if I even dared think of such a thing. He was a miserable bastard. There was never a trace of love in his actions or words to any of us.

People used to patronise me that it was usual to hate your parents as a teen and I would grow out of it. But as I had my own family and loved my son and tried to love my wife – a person almost as miserable as my father – my hate for him only grew.

When I found the courage to divorce my first wife – my son’s mother, it was a turning point for my son and I. He still doesn’t talk to her.

I found the love of my life and when we married, it changed my life. As a symbol of that change, I took her name. Oh the trouble it caused!