The history behind the name

The other day, I whined about my name for probably the 4,000th time. Well, my mom reads this blog and she called me up the other day to assuage any trauma I have endured and/or may be continuing to endure (I'm over it now, Mom, honest!). And what she told me was that Clark was the cool dude in the neighborhood when she was growing up. Her term: "A real-life Fonzie".

Okay, yeah, now things make sense!

Well of course I'm named after the neighborhood badass! I should have known! Mom later sent me an email with even more background on the Brooks family names. I haven't run a "Carol's Corner" in a while and I asked if it was okay to re-print her email. She said yes and so here you go...

"Here is more background on your name. Your father and I both agreed that we would never name our kids after their grandparents. My father's name was John but John Brooks is almost as boring as John Doe. The other choice would have been Casper which I think would have been at least 100 times worse than Clark. Your father did not want to name you Charles. He hated the name because of all the nicknames he had over the years. Some of them were Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chaz, Chuckie, etc. He had an aunt that insisted on calling him Chuckie Charles which he absolutely hated! So Clark it was.



If we had named Connie after a grandmother the choices would have been Mildred or Delphine. Please gag me with a spoon. I had a friend in school named Connie and I just always liked the name. On her birth certificate she is named Connie not Constance. What's the point of naming her Constance if she was always called Connie. Her middle name, Louise, came from a sister of your father that died when she was still an infant due to an illness that I have no details on.


Originally I was going to be named Judy Faye. My father's name was John Francis Rumics and for some reason he wanted his children with the same initials. Aunt Joan was Joan Frances Rumics. Luckily when I was born my father had a boss who had just named his daughter Judy and if my parents had named me the same it would have looked like he was sucking up.So I, Carol Lynn, was named after my favorite aunt, Caroline.


So much for the stories behind the names."

--Carol Brooks (my mom)