My wife and I often joke that our sons are near palindromes. Max and Sam. Sam and Max. Everyone confuses the names. Even us. It happens so often that I generally forget that Sam isn't Sam's name.

I know plenty of Jons. Most of them are Jonathans, but I know a couple of other guys whose parents figured they would be too dim to remember a name with more than three letters. My wife and I did the same for Max. He's not Maxwell, or Maximilian or anything else. He's Max.

But Sam is really Samuel. This rarely comes up, but recently I've had it thrown in my face, and it kinda bugs me.

A couple weeks ago, we flew out to New Mexico for my brother's wedding. I had to put proper names on the tickets, and so Samuel (and not Sam) was the passenger.

Sam is a cheery kid. He's bubbly, full of energy and generally smiles. A lot. But whenever he's called Samuel, he frowns and juts out his chin. He acknowledges the name, but being in its presence seems to temper his personality. When the security guy at the airport asks "Which one of you is Samuel?" Sam puts on his Samuel face, stands rigidly straight and says, "Me," in an uncharacteristically deep voice.

He was at least three before he even started to believe that his name might be Samuel. After all, everyone had called him Sam. Occasionally we called him Sammy, but that never seemed right.

There were other nicknames. When Sam was a baby, I often used the decidedly un-PC moniker Sambolino. Samster was another obvious choice, though that quickly evolved into Samster the Hamster and then simply Hamster. Sam generally didn't like being called a hamster, and he said so with great frequency.

This year, another Sam joined Sam's preschool class. That Sam generally goes by Sammy, and so now our Sam has refused to answer to Sammy. "I'm not Sammy. Sam H. is Sammy. Don't call me Sammy." He does make an exception for the two-year-old girl down the street who dotes on him. She can call him whatever she likes. The rest of us must call him Sam.

Why did we even name him Samuel? We thought that it sounds better in conjuction with the rest of his name. At least, that's what we told ourselves. And who knows? Maybe someday he'll want to be distinguished. That hasn't happened to his parents, but you never know. Max has shown a surprising inclination toward the proper wearing of clothes--something I've never spent a moment considering.

The other time Samuel comes up is with school. Sam is entering kindergarten next fall, and we had to get him enrolled, which has involved lots of paperwork and a fair amount of stuff in the mail. All of the letters to our house are addressed "The Parents of Samuel..." Every once in a while it takes me a moment to remember that I am the parent of Samuel. It's a weird thing.

I'm not worried about what the teachers will call him. Sam will be quite forthright in declaring his choice. Plus, he'll know a number of the kids in his class, and they'll know what to call him.

It's just a little unnerving remembering that I am, indeed, Samuel's dad. Maybe someday he'll use the "uel." Maybe he won't. It's there if he needs it. Maybe the universal parental instinct of covering all the bases is the real reason that we saddled him with the longer name.

Or maybe I'm thinking about Sam's name way too much, which has been a problem for his mom and me. We were going to name him Oscar, but for some reason my wife balked in the hospital, and so Oscar became Sam. I think he's more of a Sam than an Oscar, but mostly he simply more him than anyone else. A name is just name. A person is so much more. And Sam(uel) is a person that makes our life wonderful, no matter his name.

Jon Worley is much happier without the athan.