The name “Guy” as identified by thinkbabynames.com is an alteration of the Norman French word “guie” which translates roughly "to guide” or “leader.” It was a common name until a revolutionary by the name of “Guy Fawkes” thought it would be a good idea to blow up Parliament in the early 17th century. This in turn led to a swift decrease in the popularity of the name, because, even in the 1600s, naming your child after a terrorist with a preoccupation for arson was a bad idea. Despite this rather unseemly past, the moniker is still one of the most popular first names for males, coming in at #252 out of 1,220! I’m not exactly sure where it’s popular, because the only “Guys” I’ve met have been my father and the oafish galoot staring back at me through my bathroom mirror.
Whether or not you actually know someone named “Guy,” the namesake undoubtedly implies the utmost masculinity in its bearer. To most of you, hearing the name “Guy” probably conjures up the image of a barrel chested French-Canadian goal-tender with 21-inch biceps and a couple of missing teeth. Hell, the Old German word for “Guy” meant both “warrior” and “wood”: Q.E.D. every person with the name must be a badass. Unfortunately, despite a whole 10 minutes of solid research, I couldn’t find a single language that defined “Guy” as a gawky teenager reading comic books in the dim flickering light of a television screen.
To say I was unfit for my name in my formative years would be an understatement. At 6’-4" and 140 pounds, I was a walking lamppost, who despite looking like the awkward progeny of a giraffe and a gibbon could neither dunk a basketball nor bench press his body weight. Without these retrospectively idiotic attributes, I became a walking idiosyncrasy, a social peculiarity whose ungainly exterior exacerbated an already meek personality. To make matters worse, I came from a family of physical and charismatic giants. Guy Sr., my father, is 6’-6" inches, 280 pounds, and all personality. Perhaps my mother named me after him hoping some of his dynamism would rub off on me, or maybe she just thought it’d be funny. Either way, I wasn’t laughing. Pardon the cliche, but I was a mere shadow of the man my father was; his name fit him, so why didn’t it fit me?
Our names, whether we know it or not, are a precursor to the people we will eventually be. I didn’t pick my name, but I knew even at 15 years old I was going to have to grow into it, because a weird kid with an even weirder name might as well have a target tattooed on the back of his head. Having since put on about 60 pounds in the past five years, I can tell you for a fact that even though I look the part, I'm still not exactly comfortable in my own skin. I’ve essentially traded one insecurity for another. Now instead of being a skinny bookworm, I’m a bookworm in the body of a jock. The fact that my vocabulary isn’t comprised solely of monosyllabic words seems to confuse even my closest friends, a fact that leaves me somewhat perturbed. I have come to represent my label, a fact that leaves me feeling a little empty. Would I be a different person if I wasn’t named “Guy?” I’m not sure, but I know for a fact I wouldn’t be as unique. The name is a rarity; I’m a member of a dwindling species and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
