ok i’ve been thinking about this for ages: what did hadley think about dale naming their son development. did she really just roll with it lol (…actually, considering her character profile mentions her wanting to name kids after money…how not surprised am i about it if she did agree)
I'd like to say that when Dev was born, Dale was very touched and held him tenderly and cooed over him, and Hadley was so charmed by her usually weird-about-emotions husband in that moment that she wanted him to pick Dev's name and she accepted anything.
But that would be a blatant lie, because he didn't show up for Dev's birth. lol.
When I made my Dimmadome family tree, I was trying to pick names that were equally odd for Dev's ancestors (Dale's being Peddler - a salesman - and Doug's being Skullduggery, meaning dishonest and prone to tricks or bribing). Each name I picked was a play on the name they publicly use.
When I was picking a name for Doug's dad, I opted for a Scottish one since there's a Scottish ancestor in "Lost and Founder's Day" and I thought the Scottish ancestors might be more recent in the family than the Roman ones (since we know Dimmsdale was settled by the English and Scotland is closer to England than Italy is).
The name I picked for him was Duncan- a common Scottish name that starts with D, and I liked it. I went looking for words that could play on "dun" and about fell out of my chair when I came across Bildungsroman... a literary genre for works that focus on personal growth and development. And I couldn't NOT commit to that!
Doug is a real estate tycoon. I took this into account when naming his parents- I gave his mom the maiden name Huber, which can be interpreted as "owner of land."
I like to think Duncan married into a family of landowners and turned that into real estate sales, and between that and people asking what his name meant, he somehow ended up with the nickname Development (for land development) and that's what people called him.
There are many Scottish traditions about sons sharing the names of fathers, grandfathers, or great-grandfathers. I imagine Hadley and Dale agreed that their first kid would be the Dimmadome heir and Dale could pick the name, but any kids after that would probably take their names from her family tree instead of his... Mostly because Hadley is very close to her extended family and Dale isn't.
What I'm saying is that it's very in character for Hadley to say "I've heard about this cool tradition of sons named after the dad's paternal line" and then commit to that without fact-checking (I mean, Dale's named after the Dimmsdale founder Dale Dimm, so why would she assume there are specific guidelines?)
She definitely looked at Dale's family tree and pulled out a few names she liked (Making it a little easier on Dale than leaving him to narrow down names himself, but still letting him have final say since Dev's his kid too). The one thing you need to know about Hadley is that she is pretty laid-back and big on communication & teamwork.
Being a hoarder, she probably still has the piece of paper she wrote her name ideas on, with Dale circling "Development" and adding a question mark.
I imagine Hadley met Duncan | Development when he was alive and he got along with her better than Doug did, as Doug's always been sexist towards her. She also liked the name Cassias, after Dale's maternal grandfather, so they could've called Dev "Cash," but that doesn't start with D.
Dale picked the name Development (Let's be honest, he probably also got along better with his grandfather than his dad) and they gave him Devin as a middle name so they could call him something shorter. Hadley's reaction was definitely "Say no more; I have given birth and I am tired." One of the names Hadley did want for a kid was Bill... Probably because she'd love to name a daughter Dolly (after her mom) and then they'd be Dolly and Bill. She would've been pushing for Bildungsroman with Bill as a nickname. Dale, who probably got teased for his own names growing up (because his full name is Daedalus Dallas Peddler Dimmadome) would've put his foot down on that like, "We are not letting this kid have a name anywhere close to Dung." #Bad at everything, but decent at quality of life improvements If Hadley could've picked, she would've loved 4 kids named Dolly, Bill, Buck, and Penny; she has no shame.
Dev's parents call him "Devin" most of the time, but sometimes they use "Dev." My vision is that Dev doesn't have issues with either of his names because they're often spoken to him in affection, especially by his mom.
Thus, he doesn't insist they call him Dev or resent the use of his other names (seeing as he doesn't react in canon to Dale's frequent use of Devin, isn't surprised by the one time Dale called him Dev, and didn't react to his full name being dropped in "Battle of Big Wand"). He'll respond to anything. He'd probably go by Devin if that fit on a retro high score list.
The worst part about Dale and Hadley still being together in City Lights AU is that Hadley wants more kids, so you have to wonder what cursed names any others would end up with, like Skullduggery but shortened to Skull. Maybe Dev got off easy there...
