What's in a Name?

When I met my husband (and subsequently began falling madly in love with him) in early summer, 2002, I was not aware of silly details like his last name, or that he went by his middle name. My education on such matters fell to the person who introduced me to Mr. Wonderful: my roommate and friend, Chrissy. I wondered allowed to her why he would go by Casey, when Brian is such a better adult name (I have since changed my mind--I don't think I could call him Brian now). When Chrissy told me his last name, we both wondered why he pronounced it exactly that way. Why not Co-art?

Upon getting engaged, I remarked to family and friends: "I can't believe I'm going to take on a name that has the words 'cow' and 'wart' in it, and I don't even care!" It had to be love.

I can't count the number of times when our name has been misspelled Coward, Cowerd Powerd, Powart, Toward. The worst was a misprint on a sign-up sheet: Cowtrd. I'd say Cowtrd took the cake. Or the muffin. Or whatever. Listening to my side of phone conversations, one will inevitably hear me say, "Cowart. No, Cow. Like 'moo.' C, like Charles--o--w--a--r--t, like Tom."

Through the years I've had ideas of making a play on our last name. We might as well make the best of it. Casey has never been too keen on this. When we created a family website 5 years ago, he was not about to make our domain name a laughingstock. (Perhaps when you grow up with the name, it is not such an oddity in your mind.)

So, this blog being more my hobby than his, I am able to finally make my ridiculous dream come true. (If he did a blog, its name would likely be "Snowman on Fire.") And Casey does not have to worry about being unprofessional or hand out business cards that say to contact him at "Casey at the bovine's dot com."

Yes, it is a strange name for a blog. But Cowart is a strange name, too.