I am Ian William Ennis Smith. I am a Smithsonian.
Ian comes from the Scottish Gaelic for John, the first name of my maternal grandfather. Smith comes from the Proto-Germanic for a skilled worker. It is the last name of my paternal grandfather.
Ian Smith is a relatively short name of 2 words containing 8 letters, 7 unique. It consists of 5 consonants and 3 vowels. The characters, by alphabetic order, are a, h, i, i, m, n, s, and t. Its Soundex Index is I525, and Metaphone value is string(5) “INSM0”. The sum of the corresponding letter values is 93. The name on a telephone keypad is 426-76484.
Common anagrams, excluding the surname of the accepted inventor of basketball, include histamin, thiamins, and isthmian. Ian Smith is hitman, he has considered the alternate path before.
My parents are Carmel Ennis Smith, from Placentia, and William Mark Smith, of Freshwater. They have or had around 17 siblings between them, giving us countless first cousins. I have a brother Mark Louis Ennis Smith and a sister Leah Marie Smith. My grandparents were John Louis Ennis and Marian Canning, and Cornelius Smith and Margaret Griffin, all diseased and then deceased.
I was born in St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital in St. John’s, Newfoundland on Sunday, February 26, 1986, the day after democracy was restored in the Phillippines, and the same day that an already famous Johnny Cash and a still unknown Max Martin celebrated their births.
I’ve been called many nicknames over the course of it all, with only the first of the following still in common use: Smitty, Shmead, Fuzzy Fella (archaic), Spike (archaic), Smitty Pits, Smeagleberry, Knifey, Smitty One, et al. When introducing myself to a stranger, I often hesitate, weighing the response between Ian and Smitty, as it depends on our potential relationship and who I’d like to present myself as today. Sometimes I explain the hesitation to trigger an ensuing conversation. My periodic musical alter ego is Executive Producer, a name imagined and settled on faster than any other decision I’ve ever made, not because of how much I like it, and possibly in spite of how much I don’t actually care for it.
A different man named Ian Smith was once the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, and many people think they are the first to relay that information to me. I had an uncle who liked calling me Ian Hanomansing, who is a man that works for the CBC. I think he just had a good time saying the word Hanomansing. Han-o-man-sing!
Hurricane Ian in 2022 will not elicit the panic one might hope for in an eponymous storm.
Martin Julian Buerger (April 8, 1903 – February 26, 1986) was an American crystallographer and a Professor of Mineralogy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and look outside where it’s quiet and dark except for distant stations and flickering street lights and I wonder if I am Martin Buerger reincarnate. If so, my still previous life is likely that of eleven-year-old Dutch boy Nicolaas de Graaf, may he rip in peace.