About Tru

The Name Story

When I was born, my mom hadn’t quite picked out a concrete name for me. When the nurse made her choose a name to put on the birth certificate, she chose “Bosun”, meaning the person on the ship who is in charge of the deck and keeps track of rigging and all of that. She never called me this, of course, so for the first year and a half of my life I was referred to as '“Baby”.

Nearly two years pass before my mom’s best friend (and my godmother) insists that she has to settle with a name immediately, lest this kid have identity issues before he even qualifies for preschool.

So the three of us sat in a triangle and deliberated. My godmother says “what about [blank]?”, my mom says “hmmm I don’t know, what do you think Baby?”, Baby stares back at them blankly, again and again and again.

Eventually my godmother says “what about Truman?”, my mom says “hmm I don’t know, what do you think Baby? Truman?” And my teetering-on-toddler brain heard these sounds, and responded “Tru”.

And so it was, Tru became my name (it was soon altered on my birth certificate) and every other option became a middle name.

Thus I was named, Tru Gabriel Bosun Liam Coltus Stites.