What's in a name?

Many vanners name their vans... mine has gone through a couple.

When I first bought it, my first vanity plate for it was KAOTIC.. I had a thing for chaos and thought the van was perfect for that.  I had mulled over several names, never coming up with one I really liked.. I almost went with "Dark Passions".. (you can actually still see where I had written that on the paint on the rear window) -but that plan ended up on the back burner when a strange turn events gave the van it's own name.

At one point, many moons ago, I was a step-dad, and one day at a fair, I won this little alien doll in a black robe, which ended up riding shotgun in the van.  So along comes the next show, and I leave the doll on the seat.
The next thing I know, I start finding more alien stuff in the van, or being given to me... and combined with the comments I heard about my van looking like a spaceship when all my lights were on.. AREA 51 became the name/theme.  That plate was already taken, so I went with UFOVAN. I ran with that plate and theme for several years.
now comes the monkey wrench in my vannin life... I got laid off.
When this happened I moved to Maine, and got the plate VANNIN, and then the van sat for a year.
Over the next several years, I wasn't able to attend many events, and was basically concerned with just keeping the van running. I ended up removing a lot of my lights, as I couldn't afford to replace them all, the van became "a van" again... and it wasn't seen a whole lot... becoming the ghost of what it was.  As time went on and I wasn't showing it, I decided to retire the whole alien theme.  The past couple of years I have settled on calling it "the Grey Ghost", as it has been in primer since 1996.
I figure until I paint it, this will be it's name, and I think it is a fitting name.

Once I paint it.. I'll have to give the van time to name itself again.

Who knows.. maybe I will paint it grey?