The naming of cats
is a difficult matter.
But, more interesting: the naming of people. Choices people make in what they call themselves, especially, or in any way how they portray themselves. (Though I forget where, Michelle was discussing her gravatar image, and how she feels it’s no longer quite right to identify herself. I find it easier, since most of my images are cats, so I don’t feel the need to change them much: the cats do not change much, unlike kids.)
I’ve had a — shall we say — fractious relationship with my name. As a child I went by a lot of different names, which I won’t bother to list, though I will note that you can identify when I owned things based on what name I wrote in them. (Never my real name, or at least not until I was older.) My parents apparently fought with the people at Disneyworld when I wanted to have the mouse ears hat with “Jake the Snake” written on it. (This was my first alterna-name, which was in part because I was going to be Jacob, had I been a he, and my father called me that occasionally; the snake part was, of course, from Sesame Street.) The other name I used a lot was from a trolley: Polly, often Pollycat.
I wonder what my blog might have been like had I been jakethesnake, or pollycat, instead of wolfangel.
For some reason in elementary school I always went by my first name, though I continued not to like it. I preferred my middle name, and disliked my Hebrew name and last name. (For a very long time I thought I would change to my mother or grandmother’s birth names when I grew up. I sometimes wish I’d done the latter, a bit.) My last name was particularly bad when my father, thinking it was a good idea, told some people in my (first) high school a (bad) nickname he’d had based on his last name.
I kept *intending* to go by my middle name, but didn’t change when I switched high schools, or went to summer camp, only (eventually) when I went to Cegep. It stuck just fine in Cegep and while I was in chemistry, but people said I seemed more like a firstname than a middlename. And my family and friends I had from high school didn’t change names. I felt weirdly divided and not myself, or with two many identities. People called me different things, and I was unhappy, and this feeling of being a fake with even a fake name (multiple fake names!) was not helping. I switched to linguistics and tried to get people to call me by both names. That seriously didn’t take. So I’m sort of back to my first name, except sometimes I go by first and middle, and a few people still call my by my middle name.
And online I’ve gone through multiple handles, more than I can even recall.
I’ve fought with my name a lot, fought with accepting it as some sort of designator, some way of defining my identity. It’s not a particularly interesting or unusual name; it’s hard to pronounce if English isn’t your first language; and, what’s always made me bitter, there is no good nickname for it. I felt like I was being penned into something I didn’t choose and couldn’t even change to make more like me, somehow. And this was, in ways, my life being played out on one small subfield: as is life, things happen that I didn’t want and I couldn’t change the facts of them. (Some were, oddly, associated with my name.)
And I’ve gotten comfortable with my name, finally; I still sometimes wish it were a different name, but — weirdly anthropomorphic as this sounds — it’s gone through a lot with me, and it’s come to fit, more or less, and I am comfortable with the ways it does not. Perhaps people who associated me as wolfangel too long find, if they learn it, that my real name sounds somehow wrong: I have certainly found the same about bloggers, where if I learned their name after associating them with a pseudonym too long, the name seemed odd. (Actually, I’m sort of curious if anyone else feels this way.) But then I also have trouble changing from a full name to a nickname for people. Did I first meet you as Valerie? I might never switch to Val.
But, digression aside, I feel like I’ve worn down the rough edges of my name, and also a bit that it’s worn down the parts of me that don’t fit. I fought so much with and about it that it’s an important part of me. Which is partially, I think, why I’m a hardass about name changes on marriage and about choices for names of your children. My parents have three daughters, and of my cousins who share my last name, only one is a boy — and, frankly, I don’t like just his values being associated with my name. (I suspect his sisters would not keep their names.) I might or might not ever have children, so this might be a moot point. But still it bothers me, perhaps unfairly, choices that other people make. (There are good reason for changing your name. And even if the reason isn’t good, it’s your right to make this choice. However, I can hold whatever opinions I so desire: and do.)
As I’ve figured out ways of being who I am, or accepting who I am, I’ve been more or less comfortable with my name, which you could see play out on how well I responded when someone said my name, how many unrelated nicknames I had online. As I’ve been happy or unhappy, I’ve liked different names. Were it easier to legally change your name, I’m not sure what I would be called now. I suspect I would change my name fairly regularly. I wish we had a culture where people chose new names a few times in their lives. My name ties me to myself more than anything else except this actual body I am in.
It’s funny — this name my parents half-picked before I was born, changed when my father misunderstood my uncle as my mother was ill, chosen without knowing me — these names become so integral to identity, so tied in with who you are, despite being shared with so many other people. And yet I often lack other words for description.
May 30th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
I’ve never liked my name. But my parents argued over calling me Wendy, and I’m really glad they didn’t.
For some reason, I’ve always wished my name was Chloe or Kate or my mom’s, Mary (which she hates, btw).
May 30th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
My brother got the good name. Life’s not fair.
May 31st, 2005 at 12:15 am
Talk about preempting: awesome post.
I think it’s integral to comfort within one’s own skin that the name wears itself upon you and becomes who you are. None of my names are my own. Judith is my mother’s first name. Michelle is a feminine choice because I was not a boy and could not be called Michael. Palmer is my husband’s name. These names are all thoroughly integrated with my being now.
You’ve actually gone at it in an entirely different way than I planned, with your name. I’ve certainly suffered over my name but I’m now interested in how we name ourselves when we choose to do so. How we define and therefore limit ourselves.
May 31st, 2005 at 1:13 am
I actually like my name, though I’m not fond of some of the women in pop(ish) culture who share it.
My first name is an anglicization of a Yiddish name. My parents had a few options for which anglicization to use, and I’m glad they picked the right one. I’m not a fan of my middle name, but I can (and do) ignore it. When I was in Israel a decade ago, I found that my English name is difficult for native Hebrew speakers to pronounce, so I started using my Hebrew name (which most anglophones can’t pronounce).
Of course, now I am wondering what everyone is called.
May 31st, 2005 at 9:01 am
MS, now I’m curious too. Britney (or, presumably, Brittany)? That’s not particularly Yiddish, in the “not even a little” sense. (Actually, if anyone’s curious, I don’t mind telling my first name — or middle. It’s just to avoid the google.)
I also really like the name Chloe, Cindy, and my mother and I liked the name Cynthia for my little sister (so very wrong for her, now that we know her, though of course it would have seemed fine if she’d had it all along). And, like Becky, I am convinced that my sisters both got better names, but neither of them particularly like theirs. I don’t know if my mother likes her name, but I know she doesn’t like my father’s name (and sometimes calls him by a nickname based on his middle name — he also calls her by this nickname).
(More when I have time, because I want to respond to you too, Michelle.)
May 31st, 2005 at 11:09 am
And interestingly, Suzette Haden Elgin has written about names & Sapir-Whorf today:
May 31st, 2005 at 11:12 am
Great post! I’ve also had a on-again/off-again relationship with my name (Starr) since I was very young. I spent years hating it b/c of all the teasing I went through as a child. I also hated being singled out by teachers and other random adults who loved my name and just had to go on and on about how pretty it was. I endured years of teachers asking if the name was supposed to be “Stan” instead of “Starr” on the attendance sheet (b/c “n” is right next to “r” on the keyboard, right?). There was nowhere to hide when I was feeling shy or didn’t want to stand out - everyone knew my name & would never forget it (I guess it’s hard to forget a name like mine). However, I made peace with it somewhere in my early 20’s and actually love it now. It makes me unique - I like having a name that is not the same as everyone else’s. There are still moments when I get annoyed b/c of it, but it’s people’s stupid remarks that annoy me (I get asked at least once a week if my parents were hippies. I’m 27 - imagine how many hippie questions that amounts to!), not b/c I hate my name. I suppose part of that acceptance came with accepting who I am. :)
May 31st, 2005 at 11:31 am
I also have an on-again-off-again relationship with my too common name (mainly off-again), which is why I’ve stuck with my Russian name from first-year Russian for the past while, although there’s a split now. My in-laws call me by my Russian name while my parents call me by my real name. In fact, I’m not sure that my in-laws could say what my real name is without giving it some thought.
The faculty is all over the place with my name and many of them use the diminutive of my real name, which I normally despise but can somehow forgive when an East European or Russian uses it because they must shorten my name somehow to demonstrate their affection for me.
I don’t know, I’m coming around to the attitude that no matter what you call me, I’m me or however you imagine me so you can name me at will and I’ll stick with whatever name I’ve given myself at the moment.
May 31st, 2005 at 6:42 pm
Perhaps I jumped to the wrong conclusion, but I figured anybody of an even slightly geeky bent who wanted to know already knew Becky’s given name. And it’s a name I’ve always liked, too. Probably people’s name esthetics vary as much as their personal-appearance esthetics.
May 31st, 2005 at 7:23 pm
Well, my name is a common name, spelled in the most common way. It’s not that it’s an ugly one, just that it’s sort of boring.
ACW, I’m sure I could try to figure out Becky’s given name (I assume it’s not Rebecca), but only with the knowledge of her IP. It’s not my field, so I don’t care so much — mostly I am intrigued by people in my field blogging pseudonymously. (Not that I don’t like her blog as much, just that I don’t feel finding out her name would mean as much.) I believe people could also find mine with some marginally clever googling, but I don’t believe anyone has.
May 31st, 2005 at 8:52 pm
My parents considered allowing my sister and I (though I’m a couple years younger, so they must have discussed this before my sister was born) to choose our own names once we were old enough to do so. (I don’t remember if this meant our birth names would be provisional, or what; they ultimately decided not to go this direction.)
When my sister and I found out about it she said she really wished she could have had a different name. Up until that time I’d had no idea she so disliked her name. I don’t actually mind my first name - it’s the last name that generated the most teasing when I was a kid.
But I actually have multiple names anyway: my parents call me by a shortened version of my Chinese-origin middle name, my sister calls me “dede” which means “little brother” in Chinese, and almost everyone else calls me by my first name. At school my sister and I always had to make sure we used each other’s first names when referring to each other, or people wouldn’t know who we were talking about (I call her by a version of her Chinese-origin middle name).
For a while I was on a swim team when I was a teenager and people there called me by my first and middle initials as a nickname. No one else has ever called me by a nickname and I’ve become so accustomed to my full name that I don’t like it when people shorten it to [my name]-y. But when I was taking Russian, a diminutive version of my name stuck and I finally decided to just accept it. But only if the whole sentence is in Russian.
May 31st, 2005 at 10:09 pm
I went to school with a guy who was allowed to choose his middle name. He was a little kid when he selected the name “Cuddles”, after a stuffed animal. His parents asked if he was sure, and he said yes. A few years later, they asked if he wanted to reconsider. He didn’t.
When I met him, he was an adult, and he went by his middle name.
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:57 pm
I’d swap my middle name (Jean) for Cuddles, I think, if my parents had given me the choice. But it would feel wrong now to just go down to the courthouse and pick myself a new name, or to ask my friends to start using a new nickname; I think names should be gifts, somehow.
And I also get mildly discombobulated whenever anyone I know changes names, whether it’s from blog-pseud to real or long-version to short-version.
June 3rd, 2005 at 5:32 pm
That is one guy with a good sense of self. Cuddles. I like my middle name, and would not swap it, even if it too lacks the nicknamability I have wanted.
Yami, I am glad I am not the only one who finds it weird. I will admit then that you are one of the people whose real name seemed somehow off to me when I first heard it. (It’s a nice name, but I think of you as Yami.)
June 3rd, 2005 at 6:54 pm
I think that my mother had a plan that failed with my name. She has a double first name and no middle name, and I’m thinking that she was hoping to use both my first and middle names together. But no one followed along. I am somewhat named after my grandfather and his mother, giving me the middle name Frances, which is too old-fashioned for my tastes. (I’ve always disliked my middle name.) My brother’s name is Michael Theodore — he is somewhat named after our other grandfather, who anglicized his name to Ted.
June 3rd, 2005 at 7:46 pm
Actually, I can tell you for a fact that Cuddles’ sense of self is a bit too good, but anyway.
When I graduated from high school, one of my teachers, Mrs. [Lastname], told me I could call her [Firstname]. I’m still in touch with her lo these many years later, and I call her [Firstname] out of respect, but it feels weird. Learning the real names of bloggers I read would probably disorient me similarly, though not as much as meeting them in real life would. I know that I come across better in print than in person, and not because I’m misrepresenting myself - I’m sure that many of the folks I read are similar in that respect.
My first name is nicknameable. Some of my close friends, as well as family, call me by the nickname, and I’m cool with that. But I can’t stand it when strangers assume that that’s what they should call me - it isn’t. It’s not the “obvious” nickname (Michael is nearly always Mike, Steven is generally Steve, Jennifer tends to be Jen or Jenny…); using it without asking is overly familiar. Aside: I like nicknames that aren’t merely truncations. Elizabeth has some nice ones, and one of my favourite names, Adelaide, shortens nicely to Adele and Ada. (Hardly anyone else I know likes that name though, and so I wonder about sticking a hypothetical daughter with it.)
(Not Britney, by the way, thank God.)
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Becky: The double name thing didn’t work for me, either, though it’s fairly common here, if not so much among anglos. I am named after my great grandparents, but all we did was copy initials.
MS: I had much trouble going to first names for some people, as well.
And I also suspect I come off very different in person, though perhaps not? But I choose to focus different parts of me online, and I get to avoid the shyness thing — it shows up in my not commenting, which is not so obvious.
I am incredibly curious about your name now.
June 4th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
Y’know, I’ve met several blog-people in person, but they all blogged under their real names, or a real-life but nonprofessional nickname. A couple were surprising, because their blogs weren’t personal enough to get a good read, but whenever I’ve felt I’ve gotten to know someone through their blog that feeling has been mostly confirmed in real life. I’ve been told that I’m very like myself, but it would be interesting to see if this is the same with other pseudonymous bloggers.
Wolfa, I never would’ve pictured you as a Firstname either - nor do I successfully think of you as “Wolfangel”. I’m still trying to figure out what my subconscious thinks your name ought to be.
June 4th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
I’ve met a few online people, and some have been like what I thought, and some not.
Yami, when you let me know what you think my name should be, let me know. Gertrude? Nathalie? Ethel?