What is a Name?

“A word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to”

Image by rihaij from Pixabay

So I did this thing last Friday. I bought a car. A white Jeep Patriot to be exact. I had asked on Medium and Twitter what I should name it. I have never in my life ever named a car. I didn’t even know it was a thing until I started watching van life videos. Apparently, everyone has a name for their rig.

I did a stream of consciousness to try to drum up a name.

Jet Puff, marshmallow, powder puff, Spirit, Patriot Spirit, Patriot’s Spirit, etc. I was coming up empty. Then I decided I was overthinking it as usual and I should just sleep on it and let it come to me in a dream.

Lucy.

Don’t ask me where that came from. There are no Lucys in my family. The only Lucys I could come up with was I Love Lucy and the dark-haired chick in Charlie Brown TV shows. I pondered and pondered it the next morning and decided against it. My roommate’s name is Lucita. Lucy for short. Being a true-to-form narcissist she’d think that I named my car after her. Aw, hell no.

Then things just began to rumble around in my head.

America.