And the Winner Is…!

By Jen.

In honor of getting our van back, we are going to do a special post or two. The first is the long-awaited announcement of the van’s name.



Naming something is hard. As we have traveled, we have discovered that humans, especially the English, are terrible at naming things. After the 5th Cook Blah-Blah, and the third New England, you begin to wish they had kept the aboriginal names. Then at least it would be somewhat unique, even if it meant the same thing. Naming a person is even harder. It is part of what defines them for the rest of their life. My parents named me Jennifer, but there are so many other Jennifers in my age group that I have never really been a Jenny. Either Jen or Jennifer. Not that I dislike any of those names, just a consequence of my name and age. Likewise, if you are given a name that can easily be misconstrued, other kids will take advantage of and torment you. Fortunately, I didn’t really have that issue.



That said, we are both very aware of the responsibility of giving a name. We have never really been good at naming things. We even failed to name our cat (though she came with one already). It is hard to find something we both agree on it. Thankfully, for the van, we weren’t dealing with a living being, and we can always change it. So, you don’t have to worry about giving it a name that no person should have. That didn’t stop Jonathan from wanting to avoid a ridiculous name.

Living area. This rug has been replaced.

As you know, we sought for advice and suggestions from our family, friends, and readers. There were many good suggestions. We were looking for something gender-neutral, as the van is Jonathan’s mistress, but my vehicles tend to be masculine. We kinda wanted something along the theme of travel and getting away from climbing the traditional life. Curious as to what the options were? Here are some of the names we collected (in order received):

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?
5. Van-Go – Derived from the artist Van Gogh; though Jonathan didn’t want the van associated with an insane guy who cut off his own ear.
6. Carter – "Transferred use of the surname that originated in the Middle Ages as an occupational name for someone who used a cart to transport goods." Gender neutral.
7. Aladdin – from the movie.
8. Magic Carpet – Aladdin-themed again.
9. Tardis – from Doctor Who, the blue makes it quite a match, no?
10. Nautilus – the submarine from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
11. Herbie – the living, talking VW car that raced.
12. SS Minnow – ship from Gilligan’s Island.
13. Endurance – the three-masted barquentine in which Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed for the Antarctic on the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
14. Pequod – Captain Ahab’s whaling ship in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.
15. Van Diesel – a play off the actor’s name, Vin Diesel. Funny enough, it is a van and runs on diesel.
16. Smurf, Smurfette – an obvious reference to its blue color.
17. Athena – goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill.
18. Consuela – Family Guy character.
19. Krieger – Archer character.
20. The Balogh – a chess gambit named for Janos Balogh.
21. Enterprise, Voyager – spaceships in Star Trek.
22. Millenium Falcon, Death Star – spaceships in Star Wars.
23. Scheherazade – character and the storyteller in One Thousand and One Nights, in which she told 1000 tales to save her life.
24. Traveling Taco, Dumpling Drifter, Salmon Roll – suggested by a very pregnant and hungry person and a reminder that I am always too intellectual about this.
25. Serenity – spaceship from Firefly
26. Westley, Buttercup – characters from the Princess Bride (my favorite movie as a child).
27. "Van" –  with quotation marks, making it ironic.
28. The Vanguard – another clever play on words.
29. Bill, Shadowfax – steeds in Lord of the Ring.
30. Vanny DeVito – another clever play on a famous actor’s name, Danny DeVito.
31. Artax – the horse in The Neverending Story (another throwback to my childhood).

View forward from the bench seat.

So which of these did we end up going with? None of them! Can you believe it? Jonathan is apparently super picky. I guess the van truly is his baby or mistress or whatever, and he didn’t want to name it something that wasn’t serious. What did we go with? We ended up going through the inspiring travel words again and picking something from those:

http://www.theintrepidguide.com/2016/08/04/travel-words-that-describe-wanderlust-perfectly/

http://www.geckosadventures.com/tales/24-inspiring-travel-words-youve-never-heard-of/

Sink and stovetop.

In the end, we chose:

Fernweh
(noun, pronounced fern-vi)
Definition: This German word means an ache to get away and travel to a distant place, a feeling even stronger than wanderlust.

View from the rear to the front.

There you have it! Our gender-neutral, travel-related name for the van! We actually decided this back in May of last year, but never got around to writing this post.