66 years ago yesterday I made my first public appearance. Instantly I joined the small cadre of folks in my generation named “Marvin” and that’s when a lifetime of teasing began. From Bugs Bunny’s nemesis, Marvin the Martian to Starvin’ Marvin (first the restaurant, then the character on South Park) it never let up. I once asked my mother why they selected this name for me and she said, you were named for your great grandfather Morris Pinkovitch, “would you have liked it better if we named you ‘Morris’?
A brilliant, but unpersuasive, rejoinder.
Now the name Marvin had perfectly respectable origins. It first appeared in the Middle Ages as a variant on the Welsh name Merwyn – which in turn owed its origins to Merlin (six degrees of separation from Houdini?). In America the name soared in popularity from about 1920 (birth year of Marvin Mandel) to 1939 (birth year of Marvin Gaye). But after WWII the “Marvin market” crashed… a fact that did not seem to deter my parents. In looking up a list of famous Marvins, I also noted that a disproportionate percentage of folks who share my Welsh first name appear to be of Jewish or African-American ancestry. I am sure someone has written a thesis on this topic.
I gave up trying to change my name in college. I flirted with calling myself Marc for a few weeks, but it was embarrassing when people would say “hi Marc” and I thought they were talking to someone else. So I decided I was stuck with Marvin. It’s not all bad – the Urban Dictionary tells me that my name has become slang for a “sweet guy”. And at JMM, for the first time in my life, I work in the same building with another Marvin, volunteer Marvin Spector, and he is genuinely a sweet guy.
This is a long way of saying that about a mile from where my son was married this Sunday outside Detroit, there was a roadside attraction I just had to stop by. I think you can understand why.
