The name Season, Ray says, was chosen by her father, Seah Ray. The elder Ray had originally anticipated a son, and planned to dub him "Seah's son"--which was contracted into season when Ray was born, she says.
But Ray says she was unsatisfied with her tripartite appelation, and decided to add a few more names as she went through life.
"Zeugma" is a literary device in which a single verb modifies two distinct objects that do not belong together--as, for example in the following passage from Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock."
Here thou, great Anna! Whom three realms obey
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Ray says she received the name from a linguistics professor she once knew. "I'm always making oblique connections, and it sounds good," Ray says.
"Drives-a-truck" is a name Ray says she adopted one night when she was waiting for a group of friends and began playing with a toy Tonka truck to pass the time.
Later that night, Ray encountered some "really, really sleazy guys" who offered to show her their truck. Ray declined the invitation, answering that she had been driving a truck all night.
Ray says she considers the Tonka truck incident good luck, since it allowed her to avoid a potentially dangerous situation. After that night, she says, the name caught on.
When one has a name like "Yellow," "Unity" or "Season," of course, one has to learn to deal with a lot of bad jokes. Breen recalls being called Purple in elementary school. Johnson says that her name has often been distorted into "you nutty." And McGill says jokesters have occasionally dubbed her "Cosmopolitan" amd "Ebony."
As for Ray, she says she receives an inordinate number of "Season's Greetings" requests.
"Usually I tell them to come up with something original," she says.
"I don't let it bother me," Breen says of the occasional taunts. "I'm independent enough that it doesn't bother me."
Generally, Breen says that he tries to act as though there were nothing unusual about his name. He concedes, however, that he has occasionally thought about changing it, but has always decided against the idea.
"To a certain extent," Breen says, "[My name is] kind of reflective of the way I grew up. I've adopted my parent's values. I've come to appreciate its significance. My parents were always trying to achieve a lifestyle more in touch with nature. I don't think I'd be the same with any other name."
"I think that having an unusual name perpetuates a tendency to make one a more outwardly unique person," Johnson says. "All the people who I know with names like that are unique."
And many students say that the benefits of an unusual name outweigh the problems--so much so that they would consider extending the tradition to the next generation.
Johnson says she is currently favoring the name "Persephone" for a girl--or "Harmony" and "Melody" for twins.
"I definitely would try to choose something that has a special relationship to the beginning of their life," says Breen.
"I'm not going to name them Tom or Dick or Harry," Ray says about her children. "I really like the name `Tomato.'" Whatever name she decides on, she adds, "it won't be an everyday name."