What’s in a Name?

Well, we are in the last sprint to get the van shipped off. We have chosen a shipping company and have started the carnet application, so hopefully just a matter of a couple of weeks before the van is at port.

But, before we can ship off, I was hoping to pick a name for the van. We are struggling a bit with this one. Jonathan says that the van hasn’t done anything worthy of a name yet, doesn’t have enough character. However, last time we chose a name, it wasn’t really based on anything about the van. We had just found a fun theme inspired by a character on Burn Notice. The character Sam Axe always used the alias “Chuck Finley.” Always refused to use anything else. If he needed an upgrade, it went to Charles Finley. “Chuck Finley is forever” was his mantra. We loved that and thus dubbed the vanagon, with my flair for the dramatic, “Charles Theodore Finley the Third,” fondly known as Chuck.

Now it is time to pick a new name for the new van, but Jonathan hasn’t liked anything I put out so far. I have been looking for a gender-neutral name so it can still be Jonathan’s mistress (female) while still being a “he” to me (all my vehicles are male). Failing that, I have also been looking for a travel-related name. My ideas so far (in no particular order):

1. Darcy – gender neutral, I think. I think of Mr. Darcy, but I also know of many females with a first name of Darcy.
2. Samwise Gamgee – Frodo’s faithful and loyal friend, willing to carry him to the ends of the earth. How can you go wrong with naming a van that? LOTR fans, anyone?
3. Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein (aka Will) – Shout out to A Knight’s Tale, an old favorite of mine. It is not travel-related, but it is Europe-related (this van hails from Germany as well) and a very fancy name just for fun. We can call him Will, like his friends in the movie do.
4. Walter Mitty – from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I loved this movie! Just makes you want to go out and travel the world, doesn’t it?

There can also be a bunch of plays on words and names (see this website for examples for pets). I am not very clever in that arena; I know I have a many friends who are, though. So, do any of you have any suggestions? Post here so that others can feed off your ideas, or contact us directly. We would love the input!