My Son and Spock ...

We named my last child Zerrick Schuyler Jensen. We came to this name as follows:

My brother's name is Schuyler. He is named after our great uncle Schuyler Brown, who raised my grandmother and her sister as his own after their parents died. Pretty neat guy.

I have looked up to my brother for a long time, and wanted my son to have a name that reminded him of his uncle as well as my great uncle.

I have always liked names that start with Z. On my mission in Slovakia, I came across two Z names that I wanted for my children: Zbynek (boy) [Z-BEAN-EK] and Zdenka [Z-DAIN-KA] (girl). I decided that when I got married, we would have twins and name them this. My wife promptly thwarted this by not providing twins. (I know it was on purpose.) I relented and we have relegated these names to things like cars & pets. But, I still like Z names.

When Zerrick was born, I knew we wanted to name him after Schuyler, and I still really liked Zbynek Schuyler. Since Schuyler served his mission in Zurich Switzerland, we started playing with Zurich and got Zerrick.

So that is how we named him.

…

This last week at church, some old guy I've never seen before, after commenting on how cute Zerrick was asked his name. I told him and after a few moments of reflection said, "Isn't that Spock's Dad's name?"

And so it is that my son will forever be a nerd. Hippies name their kids after Flowers, Fruits, Vegetable, Weed, Granola, and other GREEN things. Nerds name their kids after Vulcans and Klingons.

(btw, Spock's Dad's name is Sarek … thus proving my point about nerds … most of my engineering peers at work, before reading this "btw," were poised to tell me Zerrick was not Spock's Dad's name ... again proving my point about nerds)