Naming

I am often asked how I got the name, Payton. Despite popular belief, I wasn’t named after famous athletes such as Walter Payton, Gerry Peyton, or Peyton Manning. No, no, no, my parents don’t even know who these people are, having zero interest in professional athletics.

When my parents were young, they didn’t have many expenses and no children to occupy their time, so they would give into their passion for film by indulging at the movie theater.

While my mother was pregnant with me, my parents went to see the movie, “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.” The movie follows a deranged woman, Peyton Flanders (Rebecca De Mornay), who loses both her husband and child in a tragic series of events. Peyton enacts revenge over the woman responsible for the death of her family by psychologically manipulating the situation in which Peyton replaces her as the wife and mother in the woman’s family.

Despite Peyton’s creepy, mind-fuckery factor, she enchanted my father (honestly, the mind-fuckery, creepy, crazy aspect to her character was probably on of the reasons he found/finds her so enchanting). He loved the way she dressed. She personified his idea of the perfect woman with her preppy and classic styling, not to mention the fact that she was 5’7”, blonde, blue eyed, and slim figured—his criteria for the perfect female. He’s fully aware of how shallow he can be. He’s a Taurus. I suppose he hoped, aspired really, that his own daughter would one day become the perfect woman as well, embodying Rebecca De Mornay, or Peyton Flanders.

When my mother was pregnant, my father made it clear only two names were acceptable for his baby girl, Marney and Peyton. This startled my mother because he’d never shown such passion before or had tried to make any family decisions. My dad simply went to his job every day at seven in the morning and came home around four in the afternoon. My mother worked as a phlebotomist and managed the domestic sphere of their lives (i.e. paying the bills and taxes, keeping the house kept, and food on the table). My mother made the majority of the decisions and was the authority in the household and for my dad to try to over step his chosen role (of complacency), not only surprised my mother, but also showed her the excitement my dad felt over my arrival. Now, she had a decision to make: Marney or Peyton.

In my mother’s life time, she had met only one woman named Marney and describes her as being “stout, unsightly, and not overly bright.” BAHAHAHAHAHA My mom thought it was a goofy name to begin with and even she’d feel guilty associating her own daughter with a woman of such caliber. So my mother went out and bought a few books on baby names and did some research on the name Peyton.

Peyton originated as a surname in the anglo-saxon region of the world, but has been adopted by contemporary’s  as a male’s name, which was important to my mother at the time. In the nineties women were gaining respect with the insurgence of the feminist movement, but most people, still embedded with the social ideologies of past generations, did not perceive the genders as equally capable of performing the faculties of, what traditionally were, male professions.  My mother didn’t want her daughter judged on the basis of having a feminine name due to people’s prejudices. She thought the name Peyton embodied strength, confidence, and assertiveness, which are imperative traits for any person, but especially for a female who would later find it her prerogative to make a home in a world made by men. So, by default, I was to be named Peyton.

After 16 hours of labor, my exhausted mother and father welcomed me into the world. Halleluia! Ok. She was so drained she couldn’t fully concentrate on my birth certificate. She thought the name Peyton sounded like it was spelled P-a-y-t-o-n. And while filling out my birth certificate that’s how she spelled it (ummm, where was my father?).

At the end of the day, I was named Payton after one of Rebecca De Mornay’s characters, Peyton Flanders, because my father thought she was h-a-w-t, hawt, spelled with an a not an e because of my mother’s exhaustive nature, but Peyton nonetheless.