Receiving a name is an important life event that usually stays with you for life. At your birth, your parents put a lot of thought into choosing your name. They may have chosen a name unique to you or one that honors someone in their lives. No matter what, it is special. That name should be honored by using it.
Throughout my life, I have tried to honor a person's name by pronouncing it each time I get the opportunity to speak to them. My pet peeve in today's world is that too many people are too lazy to take the time to do this. Instead, they shorten names with poor spelling or abbreviations. So a person's name is relegated to a letter of the alphabet, such as Mr. E. or Mrs.
S. We might as well have been born with a number instead of a name.
You might be wondering why the topic of names has come up. It has to do with another pet peeve: the habit of shortening school names. This is particularly bothersome for me. A school name should be revered by those who fall under its umbrella. Unfortunately, the trend around Dripping Springs is to call the school 'Drip' instead of its formal name. I have never considered being called a 'Drip' as complimentary. Anytime that name is used in any of my articles, you will know it has been edited by someone else.
My background goes back to 1965 when I arrived at Dripping Springs to begin my coaching career. We played all the small schools in the area, such as Buda, Kyle, Blanco, Johnson City, Burnet, Marble Falls, and Liberty Hill. Mostly, it occurred in basketball, where it had a more confined area to be heard. It would not be unusual for the student body to break out in a cheer. They would determine what they considered the worst thing a person could be and end the ditty by saying, “I would rather be a [blank] than a ‘drip’ from Dripping Springs.” I never asked but would bet those previous Dripping Springs teams endured the same experience. Thankfully, as schools grew, its popularity waned.
Dripping Springs has a very interesting history to be honored. In 1857, when the area had enough residents to apply for a post office, Indiana Moss, the wife of John Moss, one of the founding families, was asked to fill out the application. When it came to the name, she could have chosen to name it after any of the three families. Instead, she chose to name it after the beauty of the dripping springs with their melodic tunes played by the action of dripping water down the limestone ledges.
As the school system began, it was honored with the name of the town Dripping Springs, as most small school systems were. Most do not know exactly how special and unique the name Dripping Springs really is. I could not believe what I read because I thought the name would be common. Instead, Google declared there were only four towns named Dripping Springs in all the world. The other three are in Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. So you can see that we have a name that all should be proud to say in full. We used to have a cheer that went this way: “We're from Dripping Springs and no one can be prouder. If you cannot hear us, WE WILL YELL A LITTLE LOUDER.”
Carl Waits is a longtime sportswriter for the Dripping Springs Century News. He taught history, physical education and driver education in the Dripping Springs Independent School District. He is the author of “The Complete History of Dripping Springs TEXAS” which is the comprehensive history of the town of Dripping Springs, its founders and buildings.
