What’s In a Name?
Roman’s preschool teacher asked us to send a family photo and a short story about how we came up with his name. Not just us, of course — it’s a class project for next week.
If you’d asked me back in 2021, I probably could have written a sharper, more detailed version of how we got from early ideas like Clive to Roman. But nearly four and a half years later, the specifics have blurred. This assignment is probably easier if you named your child after a relative, a mentor, or your favorite body of water. For us, it’s more of a “who can remember — but I bet it went something like this.”
Roman is a lot of things, and “hard to define” is one of them. The other day in the car, Leen said, “If he wasn’t a Gemini, he’d be a Leo.” I have no idea what that means, but maybe you’re like my wife and it makes perfect sense to you. That’s Roman in a nutshell: sometimes you get it, sometimes you’re in on the bit, and sometimes you’re left stupefied, awestruck, and agog at what he’s saying, doing, reacting to, or trying to get away with. He’s a piece of work — and we love him lots.
Here’s what I submitted:
Roman Reed
Roman was born in May 2021, about 20 months after his older brother, Eliot. We wanted a name that would stand out while still connecting to his brother’s name and our family story.
Leen, Roman’s mom, is from Jordan. We looked for an Arabic name that felt right, but nothing quite clicked. Sam is from Reedsburg, Wisconsin, and since Eliot’s middle name is Madison (the city where Leen and Sam were married), we wanted another Wisconsin tie for Roman. That led us to “Reed,” from Reedsburg.
With the middle name set, we turned to first names. We ran through a list of R-names to pair with Reed and Hasler: Randy, Richard, Ronald, Ryan, Roscoe… none felt right. Sam lobbied for some alliteration with Hannibal, Hamilton, Horatio, or Herbert (all vetoed by Leen), and Henry was already claimed by a cousin. Then we said, what about “Roman”?
The name was everywhere at the time. Succession was at its peak, with Roman Roy as the youngest and most memorable character on the show. Meanwhile, Roman Reigns was in the middle of a record-breaking WWE championship run. (Do we watch wrestling? Not at all. But admit it — Roman Reigns is a very cool name.) Add to that the Roman ruins of Jerash in Jordan — one of the country’s most underrated treasures — and the choice just kept making sense, right up until delivery and the “name” line on the birth certificate.
A little showy, a little goofy, entirely lovable, and epic in character, scope, and intelligence — it fit him perfectly. By the time social media was buzzing about everyone’s “Roman Empire,” we already had ours: Roman Reed Hasler.
(Even if he still wakes us up at 3 a.m. just to check on us.)
