m.makes.musings

What's in a name?

My first proper name, taken literally, means "dream of cleverness".

Of names I could've been given, I much prefer that to "beauty" or "grace" or something else that's as much a curse as it is a blessing, though I do wonder sometimes if I'm too clever by half.

Water, death, mine1. That's what I've been told my name means.

"Dream of cleverness" came about because it was a pun on my grandma's name.

Some of my earliest memories are with her. Of falling asleep, of walking through the neighborhood, of going to the park and playing with the other kids in the dirt, a gaggle of grandparents chatting as they watched us.

There's a lot more results now when I google my name. The couple of Wikipedia index pages are still there (as is the article about the Japanese-named brain disease), but someone on one of those content-farm baby naming sites has apparently gotten to writing a blurb about my name as well.

There's probably some longer commentary on the internet evolving over time here.

I only got a legal name when I needed a passport. Prior and after then, I mostly went by a nickname.

I still remember going by that nickname, at least with my family at home, however many years and countries and seasons ago, as a kid.

No one calls me by that now.

My legal name changed when I was 13. To my displeasure, I found that a parent had put in a middle name without having asked me.

That middle name is the result of family drama, a traumatic divorce and remarriage: it's a family name a parent of mine was forced to lose. On one hand, I get it - it's an attempt from that parent to honor something that would have happened but didn't. And I'm ok with the name now. To me, it's now just a sound and an initial — and in some ways, a convenient one at that.

But I hate it every single time when I think about that moment when I first saw the document. I would have wanted my old name as my middle name and they never asked.

I joke that my current name is a first-generation parent mispronunciation of a Celtic name: chosen out of a name book when I was 5 to sound like my original name while being easier for those in our new land to pronounce.

It's unique and it's stuck and I like it.

My grandma is the mom of my other-parent. Their family, while not without their scars, always struck me as more calm than that of my parent-that-gave-middle-names.

I look at my hotheaded side of my family and I see the trauma in their behavior even now. The failed relationships, the self-esteem issues, the inability to deescalate an argument and sit down and reflect and communicate.

My grandma was stubborn but she was not violent. She could interject half too quickly with "the right answer" in a conversation or be old fashioned in her expectations, but she was also proud of the accomplishments of her children and grandchildren. My parent from her was similar, as was my grandfather from that side.

That side was far less violent, less cruel with words, and less brutal overall.

By happenstance, my grandma's family name was the same as the one my hotheaded parent was forced to take.

As a pun - and perhaps also as a way of rewriting my hotheaded parent's family history and replacing it some with their spouse's - my first name was chosen to be a riff off of my grandma's.

I've known for a few years now what name I would give my kid if I ever had one. A sort of weird one, but a short one; a little like my name and evocative of an image I've held in my mind's eye since I was a kid: A short aerial shot of me from behind, like friends chasing each other in a game of tag. I'm 8 or 9 or maybe younger, running through the trees. I don't know why I'm running or what I'm running towards, but my hair is wild, I'm happy, and I'm free.

After Notes

There's another 2 anecdotes that could maybe fit into this, but they don't quite fit right.

If I had to put in more tags on this, it'd be something like "dealing with grandma dying a few months ago" and "continuing to process family trauma" but not quite ready for that yet.

I also had an interesting experience while writing this. Part of the way through, I was frankly, a little bitter at the parent that had chosen my middle name - a line along the lines of "replacing my happy memories [via my original name that's a pun of my grandma's] with their trauma (ie, my parent's lost family name)" existed in here for a solid bit.

But then as I wrote the parts about my current name — specifically, how it's a riff on my old name anyway - I realized that wasn't quite true and felt a bit better about the whole thing.

Names

In case it's confusing (though it was done partially intentionally), here are the names referenced in this piece:

Not clear to me if it's more clear to say "parent" versus naming specific parents, but meh.

Closing thoughts

I don't think I'm gonna be able to hit 1000 words for any given piece in itself (this one is a little under 700 words) but I think I'm okay counting footnotes.

Also yeah, stuff like this is definitely why I'd rather use a semi-anonymous blog than a named/doxx'd one.

Footnotes

  1. mine like 'my', not the ordnance↩

#family #me #vignette