My Name Is Funny; Yeah, I Know

Cocks. A proud name that stretches back through history as far as names like Miller, Smith, Cooper or Baker. The miller made flour, the smith made iron stuff, the cooper made barrels and the baker, well, he baked. Bread, rastaman. Bread.

So, what about the cock? Er, Cocks. One historian says that many farmers took this name to denote their involvement in raising livestock. After all, every species has a male and every male has a…you know.

A cock.

Another historian, however, claims that this surname was erected as a bragging rite, as in “I’m the cock in this town.” The cock of the walk. To put it simply, Mr. Cocks was the most virile dude in the village. Masculine. The big cock in town.

I prefer the latter explanation. Hmm, descended from chicken farmers or…?

Yeah, it’s the latter.

Children being as cruel as they often are, I got razzed about my name, but little kids generally aren’t familiar with “cock” as a slang term for the penis, at least when I was a kid. It was always “cockroach” or “cockadoodledoo” or something silly like that. Everyone knows that the kidslang for penis is “meatwhistle.”

Isn’t that what you all called it?

As my cock and I grew the last name funnigans became a little more vulgar, with actual nicknames being replaced with giggles, smiles, grins, laughs and guffaws. People would snigger behind their hands when my name was called in classrooms. My best friends were the ones who had the balls to chortle in my face. At least they didn’t snigger behind my back, right?

I thought that those days were over. Then came social media.

Now it’s Landon Cocks. Land–on–cocks. I get it. It seems that when my name sounded like the alternative spelling, Cox, it was okay, but now that the proper spelling can be seen in all its proud, long and straight glory I am again a victim of the chortles.

And the guffaws.

So, in conclusion, my name has made me a rooster as a child, a laugh receptor as a teenager and a homosexual as an adult. Nothing against homosexual men, but they land–on…yeah, yeah, it’s not that funny to me, either.

Why do you think I put my first initial (J) in my Twitter handle and on my website? Google searches “Landon Cocks” and comes back with gay porn actors and websites. When it searches for “J Landon Cocks” the results are normal.

Why don’t I just spell it Cox, you may ask.

Because that’s not my name.

And you’ll never forget my Cocks.

Landon Cocks