I admire people who change their name, whether it’s just asking all their friends to call them something else or going so far as to change their name legally.
For years, I wondered what the moment was like when they realized what their name should be – or reallly is. Or however they think about it. I’ve wondered if it’s an immediate, sudden feeling – wham, that’s it! That’s who I am! Or if it is a slow, warm realization process, one that gradually came over them.
I’m jealous of people that have nicknames too, or people that have a pet name given to them by someone they love. Usually, nicknames drip with affection. I know that’s not always the case, and people sometimes have to go to great pains to reject those nicknames later in life. But usually, nicknames seem to say, “I belong to someone. I belong to a group, a family. And they have this special name for me.”
I also like people who change the spelling of their name. Yes, it’s annoying for teachers. But in changing the spelling of their name, that person is making the name theirs. I bet they wrote their name with their new spelling a hundred times, just admiring how it looked in its new form.
I also love long, complicated last names, or names that sound completely foreign to me. I think it’s so cool for someone to have a name that makes it clear that that person has an association so different from my oh-so-plain English roots.
I would love to change my name. I’ve never liked any of my names. I have never liked my last name – it means “cowards.” But I decided not to change my last name because it’s so closely associated with me, and because I very much love the family the name comes from, especially my paternal grandmother. I’ve also never liked my first nor my middle name. It doesn’t get any plainer than my first and middle names. And my first name sounds like so many things that I don’t always turn around when I think I hear my name, because I know that, usually, it’s someone yelling something else.
And also, my first and middle names have never felt like me.
For most of my life, I’ve never heard a name that I thought, hey, that’s me! That’s what my name should be! That’s who I am, inside! In fact, I drafted a version of this blog more than four years ago, with a different ending.
But that changed last year. It hit me so hard, what I wish my name was, that I had to stand in the spot where the thought had hit me for at least a full minute and just reflect on it. Had I thought of it when I was in my 20s, I might have dared to go through the very complicated process of changing my name.
But I’m 60. It’s too late. The trouble it would cause at this stage of my life would be monstrous, and I have enough troubles.
But I am happy to have finally realized my name.
No, I’m not going to write the name here. All I’ll say is that it’s in a song.
But believe me, my soul name suits me so much better than the name I have. And it feels good to have it – at least in my heart.
Another blog to remind the world how weird I am.
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