What’s in a name?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo & Juliet (II, ii, 1-2), William Shakespeare

And, in the spirit of those beautiful yet overused words, that which we call a monarch ‘twould fly as far.

We love names at our house. I’m not sure if it’s the same for your family, but we name just about every critter that visits our farm:

Let’s see. We have Douglas the blue heron. This bird frequents our pond and was named at least thirty years ago by my husband’s family. Since Blue Heron’s have an average lifespan of 15 years, Douglas is also the longest living heron in history.

Darth Vader is a groundhog that’s also been around for longer than the expected lifespan of the species. But hey, he is the ruler of the dark force, so what can you expect? He has kids, but to us all the little ones are Anakin. Yes, they’re cute, but I had to insist on evil names because they so also destructive. We run a trap and release program, also known as Don’t Tell the City Girl What You’re Doing (and she won’t ask). Farm life can be brutal, and I can’t say I’m altogether used to it yet.

But back to our critters: I can’t forget Nutkin the squirrel! He’s new this year. The name Nutkin is from the Peter Rabbit TV show. In the show Nutkin is a mischievous, impulsive red squirrel who is always up to something. Our Nutkin has most definitely lived up to his namesake’s legacy. I swear sometimes he’s throwing pine cones at us.

When we raised Painted Lady butterflies, even though we couldn’t tell them apart of course, they all had names. Both my kids picked out several names, and would insist they knew which was which. I played along. Even now, every time my daughter goes outside and sees a non-monarch butterfly, she squeals, “There’s Glitter!”

And Napoleon! Oh, that bird. Napoleon is our resident cardinal, and if you leave your car outside for more than a few minutes, Napoleon (so named because he’s little but fierce) jumps up and down on the car door and admires his reflection in your side mirrors. He’s such a narcissist. Sometimes he doesn’t even wait for you to get out of the car before he’s swooping up to the mirror in excitement. And when birds get excited . . . Thank goodness we have a car wash plan is all I’m going to say. I tell the kids, “We have to go through the car wash. Napoleon tagged us again.”

Oh, Napoleon.

And our hummingbirds! I can actually tell them apart. We have Jane, Austen, Marianne and Elinor that use our kitchen window feeder, and the Montagues that use the one on the backside of the house. Juliet lives there too; in our story it’s a happy ending and she moves in with Romeo.

So, it was somewhat of a surprise when I realized that naming our brood of monarchs was going to be too much for us. Of course it can be done, I’ve seen plenty of people online with a system of naming their monarchs and mapping out the enclosures. But since we’re not even keeping them for more than 24 hours after they emerge, it seemed much more simple to just give all the females one name and the males another.

That means: the one we released yesterday was Amelia Earhart #1. Amelia #2 emerged today. We haven’t had any Neil Armstrongs yet.

My husband laughed at our choice for the female name, since the real Amelia disappeared (most certainly died) in flight, but I felt that her triumph as the first woman pilot to cross the Atlantic is what she’s more well-known for, and an honor to her legacy to name our monarchs after her. Unfortunately when you start looking for women who have made history in avionics, it’s a pretty short list. Even Harriet Quimby (who?), a woman before Amelia’s time and the first woman to fly across the English Channel, died in flight too.

As of today, we’re two Amelias to the good, we have about 61 chrysalides in captivity, 1 cat making his J-shape, and 3 cats I found yesterday in the garden that I don’t think are going to make it, but we’re going to give them a shot!