Calluna

You don’t hear the name “Finn” all that much, at least we had never met anyone or heard of anyone with that name when we chose to name our son that 10 years ago. Yeah, he’s only 6, but his first name was picked out before his father and I were even in engaged.

So the uniqueness of his name makes it rather fun to see things with his name on it. The most obvious is the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. Their main fish character is named Finn so he shows up in commercials, on their packages, and is host of their Goldfish Kids Web Site.

Occasionally we’ll see a shirt with a fish or sharks that says “give me some fin” or something. Even though his name is not spelled with one ‘n’ it’s still fun.

Often people have trouble understanding what he (or we) are saying when they ask him his name. They often think we’re saying Ben, or sometimes Vin. So when he was a baby I would tell people his name Finn, pronounced like a fish fin — even though it’s not spelled that way. Using fish fin doesn’t work well if the people asking are Sunday School teachers, school teachers, etc. and are going to be writing his name. So now we either spell it out or say “like Huck Finn.” I even heard Finn say the other day “like Huck Finn,” and he doesn’t even know who Huck Finn is! (I  explained it was a character in a well-known book and made a mental note to add the movie Tom and Huck to Netflix.)

I sometimes refer to him as my “lucky fin,” (er, lucky Finn?) after the reference in the movie Finding Nemo.

And there’s also the movie version of  Great Expectations, where he got his name.

I emailed the Pepperidge Farm folks not that long ago to offer that if they ever need a real live Finn to let us know!