A boy named Leslie

Published by Professor Les March 11th, 2008 in Uncategorized. Tags: cleveland kent evans, les roka, leslie, new york times, professor les, Salt Lake City, The Selective Echo, theory of names.

Readers know that I sign my name for this blog as “Professor Les.” I’ve been asked countless times my full name, which is Leslie — yes, one of those infamous cross-gender names. And, at the age of 13, I decided to truncate my name to Les, often to the dismay of my parents but to my personal relief. I decided that the teasing was enough so I asserted my masculinity from that day forward. Today, my mom still calls me “Leslie.” So do a few others. In fact, I often tired at the guess that my full name was “Lester” (ugh!).

Then, in today’s New York Times, amid the sensationalistic coverage of the inevitable downfall of that state’s governor in the prostitution ring scandal, there was this item about research into the theory of names. The money quote came from Professor Cleveland Kent Evans, a professor of psychology at Nebraska’s Bellevue University:

“Researchers have studied men with cross-gender names like Leslie,” Dr. Evans explained. “They haven’t found anything negative — no psychological or social problems — or any correlations with either masculinity or effeminacy. But they have found one major positive factor: a better sense of self-control. It’s not that you fight more, but that you learn how to let stuff roll off your back.”

I definitely will not argue with that. Actually, with my parents’ Hungarian roots, my name is Laszlo, a common name for males. In fact, five Hungarian kings carried that name. Relatives call me “Laci” (pronounced lutz-cee). Johnny Cash summed it wisely:

“Son, this world is rough
And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you’d have to get tough or die
And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.”

Maybe the time has come to go back to Leslie.

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