86 - Your Kids Have Great Names

When looking at Strip 86, some of our readers may think that we chose Harry’s name specifically for this reason/joke. That’s not true. When we were coming up with names for the characters, we tried to give most of them meaningful names. Such as the next door neighbors are a neon green, and all of their names (for the mostpart) are variations of green. And Mr. Smiley being ironically named so because he never smiles. The majority of the other characters have names that are computer terms or related to the computer field. I simply wanted Harry to be different. And Harry seemed like such an ordinary name–honestly Harry Potter never came into my head once when thinking of this. As for Leroy, since he is Harry 2.0 (their equivalent of Jr.) I thought he needed an ordinary, if not seldom used these days name.

It wasn’t until a few weeks into the strip when I was looking on another website and saw the classic “Happy” emoticon that I realized that smilie was Harry! And then of course I noticed the spelling sameness/difference. It was so funny to me, and perhaps a bit profetic. So, I did this strip.

Oh, and I am editing this entry to add that Dott’s story about how she got Cyan’s name really happened for me. I saw Katherine Hepburn in Woman of the Year. Her character’s name was Tess. I just fell in love with the name, and thus that is how my first daughter got her name!