Her Name

So many people ask me about Tess’s name so I wanted to write something. First off, she has two middle names—something that always seems to throw people off a little. I guess we’re making up for my mom’s lack of a middle name. Forever she’s had to explain that she’s just Joyce. Franklin. That’s it. So Tess will have to explain that she’s Tess Amelia Starr Kramer and that yes, she knows her initials are TASK.

Henry was almost named Amelia—had he been a girl. It’s long been my chosen name for a girl. I loved the Amelia Bedelia books and that’s probably why I loved the name. There are other reasons but I had to edit as this entry was too long!

And she was ALWAYS going to have the middle name Starr. My grandmother’s stage name (yes, if you don’t know, she was a star with one r) was Florence Starr (that’s her above, and a piece of trivia here, her makeup in this picture was done be the Max Factor himself). Her given name was Flora Wolfe Scheuer. My grandmother at this writing is 96 years old and Luke and I wanted to honor her.

So, that was it. Henry and Tess both were potentially Amelia Starr Kramer. But then we got her picture. And we were already pretty open to changing our minds. My mother called every few hours and suggested a different name but the first one she came up with stuck: Tess. It just looked like her and sounded right. It was a good thing, too, because as it turns out, Henry can pronounce it! He still struggles with Amelia!

As I said, my grandmother was a star. She began working (as a singer and entertainer) when she was 17 and retired from real estate when she was 86. She’s quite a role model. In the late 1920s she went to Paris and performed at the Casino de Paris where Josephine Baker was headlining. She also worked in radio in Chicago and went to Hollywood for awhile (you can hear her singing in the black and white movie The Mystery of Edwin Drood). When she went to Paris, she had a chaperone who was only a few years older than her but was her traveling companion. Her name was Tess. They remained friends for decades. Tess lived in New York and they spoke on the phone throughout the years until Tess died a few years ago.

So that’s where she got her name.

Then there’s her name now—given to her by her caretakers in India. It is Gargi which I now know is pronounced with two hard “g”s and the i sounds like e. I looked it up on the internet and the meaning is “learned woman.” Recently, I met a woman from India (with a beautiful spirit and warm personality—I could go on about meeting Snigda but I’ll save that). I asked her how to pronounce Gargi and she told me. She also told me that it was a great name to have and that Gargi was a woman known for her intellect and her ability to win in debates against men. That IS a great name to have.

We will use Gargi at first and in combination with Tess as she learns her name. But I think, too, that it will stay with her/us as a name of endearment. Kind of like my mom at times used to call me Allanah which is my Hebrew name. Tess will have lots of names because she, like Henry, will also have a Hebrew name. Although we never call Henry Or’Chiam ben Allanah v’ Ori (his Hebrew name). We’ve stuck to Henry Penny and Boogie Shug.