A car by any other name

In ninth-grade English class, the word of the day was personification: attributing human traits to an inanimate object. It allows for creative license so words can sing, punctuation can stop you in your tracks and the Herald envelops you in hug-like warmth.

Perhaps because we don’t have pets our family took this idea to heart and gave not characteristics, but names, to inanimate objects around us, especially cars.

I once read that the most popular name people call their vehicles is “Betsy” and drivers often rely on color, physical appearance, make/model or uniqueness to name an auto. Not us. We have no explanation for our names except the aura they possess, which started with our 1993 Geo Prism LSI — Murray.

I did have second thoughts that our child (and then children) would think the English word for car was Murray, but my fears were soon alleviated. People owned cars, we owned Murray. And, as for the periodic threat to our kids, “if you don’t stop fighting, you’re going to Murray,” I would say. It was eventually understood by all as the place to go (not the person to see) if one misbehaves in a public place.

Like the average car owner, we kept Murray over ten years and shed tears when he got a few dollars at trade-in. He was replaced with a carbon-grey beauty named Myron that met a premature end after only two weeks on the road. Parked in a municipal lot that was parallel to an exploding gas station, Myron was declared totaled by our insurance company and replaced with Norman — an identical vehicle, except for his name.

With passing years and more drivers in our household, trusty Norman now has Albert to keep him company. Albert is the first car to be named (and gain family consensus) by my daughter, not me, reflecting the passing honor from generation to generation. 

But what gives this metal, plastic, glass and bolts real life is how people want to share in and enjoy the personification.

The service department calls cars by given names and has appended their computer files. Neighbors welcome these vehicles to the community and want to know why they all have boys’ names. Friends want to know what future cars will be called, but given the fierce loyalty and inside jokes, we keep hoping that Norman, Albert and their predecessors live to see 15 years or 200,000 miles through Long Island snows and ankle-high puddles on Carman Avenue.

Lauren Lev is an East Meadow resident and a direct marketing/advertising executive working on Long Island. She teaches advertising and marketing communications courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology/SUNY and LIU Post. Her story on a Jewish education program impacting our local community appears in “Thin Threads: Real Stories of Hadassah Life Changing Moments” published July 2012.