I've mused about this for a few years now, and I may as well put it on the record...

The Vancouver Canucks always go to the Stanley Cup finals in the Chinese Year of the Dog.

1982, 1994...the next one is 2006.

Every dog has his day.

The name Willingdon Black stems from a ‘band’ I helped devise at the behest of my childhood cohort, Mule Hughes. It was called Huxley, and was meant to bemusedly re-create the glory days of the ‘New Wave of British Heavy Metal,’ which peaked during the early 1980’s.

‘Willingdon’ has the benifit of sounding distinctly British, as well as being the name of that great strech of bland ashpalt that cuts across Burnaby. I grew up a block away from Willingdon Avenue, so that explains that part of the name.

I don’t know where I got the ‘Black’ from, but it’s not exactly original. Paired up with Willingdon it has a certain elegance, but as a rock and roll moniker it’s become much overused.

I’ve often tended to imagine Willingdon Black as a shade of black, like gloss black or flat black. Willindgon Black is a faded sort of black, like the kind you see on an old black t-shirt that has been worn and drained of its pitch. I’d say that suits me, but I still recoil at the rock 'n' roll universality of any name with ‘Black’ in it.

And it’s not just the banality of ‘black’ that irks me. My name is Alexander, but I’ve always been called ‘Alec’ by my parents. When I was very small, I was taught to spell my name ‘A-L-E-X,’ which I like. I’d spell it ‘Alex’ and was called ‘Alec.’

Make sense? Well, maybe not unless you’re Scottish. Once I got to school, my teachers and classmates took my spelling at face value and called me ‘Alecs.’ A lenthy identity crisis ensued, wherein I was often called ‘Alecs’ at school and ‘Alec’ at home.

“You know what I think would be good?” mused my mother when I was still quite young, and after she had just returned from a trip to Britain.

“You should spell your name ‘Alick.’ That’s the Gaelic spelling.”

I tried that for awhile, but the whole thing was starting to get out of control. Now I had three different names. I was a seven year-old kid with a string of aliases.

I ultimately took matters into my own hands and started using ‘A-L-E-C’ as the spelling. “There,” I figured. “That’ll take care of that problem.”

Not.

It seems a lot of people simply won’t recognize ‘Alec.’ It’s the Taiwan of names. When set against the all-powerful and ancient ‘Alex,’ it struggles to hold its own.

“How can that be,” I’ve thought to myself. “Haven’t people heard of the famous Alecs of history? Alec Guiness...Alec Douglas-Home, a.k.a. Lord Home, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1963-1964...or what about Alec Baldwin, surely these louts have heard of him?”

Just yesterday I got an email from a co-worker. In the email address, which she must have typed in order to send the thing in the first place, my name was listed as ‘Alec.’ Then she goes and starts the message with ‘Hi Alex...’

A girlfriend from a few years back explained things to me.

“I’ll let you in on something, Alechggghhh,” she said, pronouncing my name with a throatful of Gaelic-inspired mucous that mocked the Celtic purist-ness of my position..

“People. Are. STUPID!!!!”

But I hung in there. And I began to see that there were others like me.

Have you ever driven over the Alec Fraser Bridge? Oh I know, it’s officially called the Alex Fraser Bridge. It’s named after a former provincial cabinet minister. I saw an interview with his widow on television once, and she referred to him as ‘Alec.’ Not only that, but so did his colleague, the former Premier Bill Bennett.

‘An Alex who pronounces his name Alec,’ I thought to myself. ‘I’m not alone.’

And then I became aware of Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary manager of the Manchester United soccer team. I’d be watching Man U. on television, and the announcer would offer up some comment like “...and what must Sir Alec be thinking at this turn of events...”

‘Ha!’ I thought. ‘Another one.’

I became a follower of Man U., monitoring every mention of Sir Alec’s name by the various commentators. Some got it right, some didn’t. Tosome he was ‘Alec,’ to others he was ‘Alecs.’ It was all nicely summed up in a ‘Guardian’ article I read only a few months ago. The headline of the article referred to him as ‘Sir Alec,’ yet in the body of the piece he was labelled ‘Sir Alex.’ Just like an e-mail at work.

What’s all this got to do with ‘Willingdon Black?’ Well, I feel like I’ve had to struggle to get people to get my real name right, so I’ve disinclined to abandon the struggle in favour of a nickname.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to see WB not as a nickname but as a title, kind of like ‘George Gordon, Lord Byron.’ Or perhaps like the Pope, who has a real name, but then adopts a Papal name once ensconced in the Papacy.

Anyway, it’s all going to be a mute point before too long.