My Name

The name Todd, more commonly Tod, comes from the Northern Middle English (1100-1500 CE) todde, which means fox and was often the nickname given to someone who looked like a fox or acted sly or had red hair. And tod is the German word for death.

When I was named Todd with two d’s on October 17, 1949, the name was an unusual choice for a boy born in America at that time. As a consequence of this rarity I was the only Todd in my large elementary school, junior high, and very large high school. And over the course of my life I have never met a two-d Todd older than I.

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My Fourth Grade teacher Mr. Rhodes was very interested in the origin of names and for one of our assignments we were to inquire of our parents why they named us what they named us. We were also to explore the origins of our surnames. This was, of course, long before the Internet and Wikipedia and necessitated a visit to the Menlo Park Library where a beleaguered librarian helped me discover that Walton was an English name derived from combining the words walled and town, which many towns were in the bloody olden days in jolly olde.

Little did I anticipate that asking, “Why did you name me Todd?” would elicit such wildly different answers from my parents and confirm (yet again) the great chasm between them.

According to my father Charles, his great grandfather Charles was nicknamed Todd because one or more of his young grandchildren had difficulty pronouncing the name Charles and said Todd instead, and the misnomer stuck.

Now it was often difficult to know if my father actually knew something or if he was simply stating something as fact because he needed to maintain his identity as he who knew everything. The story about Todd being a mispronunciation of Charles was unconvincing, though certainly plausible, and I was ready to go with that for the purpose of writing my paper for Mr. Rhodes until I asked my mother, “Why did you name me Todd.”

My mother Avis smiled sublimely and said, “You are named after the opera singer Todd Duncan who had the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard. I saw him in Porgy and Bess when I was sixteen, one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.” Then she lowered her voice. “He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

Todd Duncan was George Gershwin’s personal choice to play the role of Porgy in the original production of Porgy and Bess in 1935. My mother saw him in 1938 when Porgy and Bess was staged in Los Angeles. Todd Duncan was the first African American to sing with a major opera company, and among his many musical accomplishments in his long life he was in two major motion pictures, Syncopation, a musical drama about the history of jazz, and Unchained, a prison drama in which Todd introduced the famous song Unchained Melody!

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There were several Scotts in school with me, and many people would begin to call me Scott, catch themselves, and say Todd, which resulted in my frequently being called Scuh Todd, which I found highly annoying. And then, of course, several of my schoolmates called me Toad.

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The truth is even I was a little uncomfortable with my name being Todd. I wouldn’t say I disliked my name, but I was definitely self-conscious about it, so much so that when someone would ask me my name I would hesitate a little before saying Todd, as if I feared they would find my name strange, which they often did and would say back to me, “Did you say Tom?”

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When I went off to college, a young Indian woman from Kenya named Izzat moved in with my parents and younger brother. Izzat was a lovely person, friendly and good-natured, and when I came home on weekends and holidays, Izzat with her charming British Indian accent would pronounce my name with a quickly-spoken Tawd and I loved it!

After hearing Izzat call me Tawd many times, I came to like my name and have liked it ever since, even when people pronounce it Todd.

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