My Name

            
             What is in a name? One might say everything and nothing at the same time. At one point in history it may have defined the soul being of a person. Now a name barely describes the nationality of a person. This was caused when promises of prosperity on our soil spread throughout the world which consequently turned our country to turn into the "melting pot" of the world. With this convergence of hundreds of nationalities, we as a people loose sight of our culture. To obtain a full sense of ones culture, it must be passed down from generation to generation for one cannot fully understand his or her culture from reading a book.
             I was brought up with as much culture as I possibly could handle. My father is a first generation Sicilian immigrant and mother's parents were in the process of emigrating from Italy to the United States when they had her. I intentionally labeled my father Sicilian and not Italian for cultural reasons. There are some discrepancies as to the difference between Sicilian and Italian culture. I cannot really indulge the reader as to what the difference actually is, even though I have been brought up being told that my whole life. I have found very subtle differences between the cultures but for the most part they are the same. Truthfully I think that Sicilians say that they"re culture is different from the Italian culture just to create unnecessary problems. .
             In fact because of my father's Sicilian heritage I was not named for four days after I was born. It was the tradition in my father's culture that caused me to not be named. This tradition states that the first born male is named after the paternal grandfather and the second born male is to be named after the maternal grandfather (Grisanti, Anthony). This tradition is important because it bequeaths respect to the person whom the child is named after. Also, there is an unspoken bond between the grandfather and the child whom he is named after.