DAZE WORK: Playing the name game resonates

As it so often does for me, it happened at Kroger. I was coming in through the double doors and the Honorable Judge Denny Bridges was leaving the interior when he spotted me and hollered, “Hey, Ricky Bob!”

Another friend who had paused alongside for a quick conversation was taken aback. “What did he call you?” she asked incredulously.

“Ricky Bob,” I rather sheepishly responded. “My NASCAR name.”

A couple of years ago, I told the judge in passing about the Internet exercise in which your NASCAR name is created by converting your formal first and middle names to the more familial nicknames and he hasn’t called me anything but Ricky Bob since. Hence, Eric Robert becomes Ricky Bob, which is certainly better than the version of that porn name exercise that takes the name of your first pet and combines it with the street you grew up on. For me, that was Snoopy 20th Avenue, so that didn’t work so well.

Come to think of it, I’ve never really had a nickname since my parents decided to name me Eric and my sister Jennifer in the 1950s. Our names were somewhat unusual in a world of Bobby, Billy, Johnny, Ronnie and Donnie -- all shortened from their more formal attachments.

If only my paternal grandmother were still around to mispronounce my first name with something agonizingly akin to “ear-ache.” You have to wonder how that happens. But then again, I’m sure Abe Lincoln didn’t think that one day his name would become a silly song lyric like “Lincoln, Lincoln, bo-binc-un.”

While Jennifer was rare in the ’50s -- when Karen was all the rage -- by the time my daughter Kara went to school in the 1980s, every other girl seemed to be named Jennifer. She had seven Jennifers in her class alone and couldn’t talk about them without referring to them as “Jennifer A.” or “Jennifer S.”

Actually I always thought that my parents named my sister Jennifer Jo just so my Dad could always say, “Jennifer Jo from Kokomo.”

Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, I had no idea where Kokomo was. Apparently neither did the Beach Boys. But that’s another story.

Meanwhile, Eric, or so I’m told, is of Norse origin with the meaning “Sole Ruler.” Reminds me of the Geography Bee I covered one time at Tzouanakis School when a contestant was asked to give another word for ruler, hesitated and meekly responded, “Yard stick?”

Turns out that the No. 1 boys’ name these days is Liam. Personally, I don’t know a soul named Liam, although I have a couple of friends who have grandsons named Liam. Haven’t really paid attention to any Liams since Liam Neeson left Schindler and his list behind, developed that “particular sets of skills” and went all rogue on us.

In Indiana in the 1970s, meanwhile, 6,378 baby boys were named Eric. The years 2010-19 saw that shrink to 583, making Eric -- once the 14th most popular boys’ name nationally -- the 153rd most common name with its use reduced by 91 percent since the ’70s.

So as this name game continues, let me suggest one thing -- don’t give your kid a first name he or she will have to spell out every day the rest of their life. I was talking about that with a funeral director a few years ago, figuring he would be among the most sensitive to making sure names were spelled correctly.

“Well, I guess I’m guilty of that,” he admitted, proceeding to spell out his daughter’s name as Ayrica, not the more common Erica or Erika.

So after all that perhaps Ricky Bob isn’t so bad after all.

As I’m leaving Kroger via the U-scan area, another acquaintance stops me and calls me “Mr. Bernsee,” but surprisingly mispronounces my last name as “Berniece.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘Mr. Bernsee,’” I respond. “That’s my Dad.”

Just call me ... Ricky Bob.