The Jemima Story

The irony in my daughter's name is fairly self-evident to those of us in the United States. I was almost violently resistant to it back in 1998 when my pregnant wife and stepdaughter recommended it. (It was suggested to them by the little girl, Jemima Potts, in Ian Fleming's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.")

Our pastor, a mountain of a man with a towering intellect to match, pulled me aside after church one Sunday. He urgently whispered, "Don't let her do that to your unborn child.". (Hell, the name Jemima is even in the Bible: see last sentence of the Book of Job, for those of you following along at home.) It means "turtledove" in ancient Hebrew.

The lines became drawn so fiercely that I suggested putting the issue to Oprah Winfrey for arbitration. I figure, if it doesn't offend Oprah, then maybe I can live with it. Of course, since I didn't have Oprah's cell number (or email address for that matter), this wasn't an option.

Then I remembered my best friend from U.S.C., who had long since made it out of the Lambda Chi house and is now a successful screen writer (best known for "Spy Game" with Redford/Pitt).

First I got my wife to agree in principle to abide by my friend's verdict, which for me was a foregone conclusion. (This guy is a rarity: a conservative in Hollywood!.) When I reach him on the phone, you can imagine my shock when he says, "You won't believe this, but I've typed the name 'Jemima' about a thousand time in the past 6 weeks!"

Unbeknowst to me, he was adapting a John LeCarre novel for the big screen, involving a sexy female character by the name of Jemima Marshall. Then came the coup de grace, "I was going to name my son that if he had been born a girl!." Sheez.

I put down the phone with a face that looked like it had just seen a ghost. My wife simply said, "Good. Jemima it is."

So this is the story I tell at cocktail parties when it invariably comes up. For those of you from outside the United States, you probably will not understand the stigma associated with that name. In England, the name is rare but not unheard of: Take Jemima Goldsmith, for example, one of the most beautiful women in the world.

But in the U.S., it was used by propagandist Southern literature following our Civil War. A myth was started about a household slave, freed by her Southern masters after the war, who chose to remain on the plantation to serve up pancakes to the returning Confederate soldiers. Basically, a female "Uncle Tom."

Then, nearly a hundred years later, an advertising firm on Madison Avenue thought of naming the first instant pancakae mix, "Aunt Jemima." The rest, as they say, is history. It was an example of brilliant marketing ("slave in a box") that is now quite offensive.

I thought at the time that I simply did not want to offend African Americans. (I have yet to meet any who are offended, by the way.) But maybe, just maybe, I had been programmed with "white guilt." Or that I did not want to confront that shameful chapter of American history, or dignify it with my daughter's pretty face. At any rate, all that is forgotten, because I lost and won at the same time. She's the only Jemima at her school, if not the entire South/Midwestern United States, and I love her all the more so because of it.