What's in a name?

  I sort of felt that all three of these essays were about names in some way. The first one I read, Contributor's Note, was about a man who had 4 given names but he was called all sorts of different things. He had so many nicknames that it was hard to keep track of in the story. In the end he settles on a simple name to put on his marriage license. The second one had a little bit a names in it, but it was more about the names of things in different languages. It was about the one woman's French teacher and how crazy and mean she was. In the end though, after being put through months of verbal criticism from the teacher, she eventually realizes she may not be speaking French but she at least can understand it, and she at least learned something. The last one I read was sort of all over the place. It was about this man and his family, but throughout the entire essay it had different sub-texts talking about anything from TV shows to penguins. I honestly wasn't too sure about what the author was trying to get through on that work.
  My favorite of the three pieces was the one about the woman learning French. That essay kept me entertained the entire time because I wanted to see what the crazy teacher would do next. The last one that had different topics in it, I liked the idea of what the author was doing, but I didn't really think it worked for his particular piece.
  As I said before, I liked the idea of the different topics in the last one I read, but I wasn't exactly what the author's reason for doing that was. It really just sort of lost and confused me the entire time I was reading it. The first one about the guy with all of the nicknames was my least favorite. I kept waiting for there to be some sort of action revolving around the names but there never was any besides the signing of the marriage license, which wasn't that entertaining to me. I didn't really get the point of these essays except for the one about the woman learning French.