This is going to be a long post, and it has little to do with ADD, so few of you may want to read it. That’s all right; I’ll be writing this as much for myself as for anyone else. As I said publicly for the first time not too long ago, I hate my name. I’ve always hated it, though until lately, I never admitted that, not even to myself. There are many reasons behind this, and I feel like it’s time to lay it all out; as I said, this is for me as much as for anybody else.
I know that there are people in the world who go through the day without food, and people living in the middle of wars, people living in fear of their own governments, or of organized bands of psychopaths who want to be the government. People living on the street. People on the edge of losing their housing and ending up on the street. People dying of all kinds of sicknesses or living with the pain of chronic sicknesses. And here I am, warm, happy, well fed, and bitching about a name. I know things could be worse. And yet, as trivial as this might be, standing next to what millions of others in the world deal with, it has dogged me as long as I can recall, so, what the hell, I’m going to write about it. I hope it doesn’t come off as too whiny or self pitying, but if it does, all I can do is ask you to let that slide.
So. The Name. I think the roots of this go back to 1899, when my grandfather was born. He grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, in a family that had been important in Virginia for almost 300 years by that time. Virginia was, and still is in many ways, an odd place. I’m not going to go into all the ways it’s out of step with much of what we think of as being definitively American; anybody who wants to know more would do well to take a look at Colin Woodard’s American Nations, and read the chapters about Tidewater.
Well, my grandfather grew up in a family that held itself in the highest esteem. It had taken a hand in running the state for two hundred years or more. A some-number-of-greats uncle had been the Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of State. Other forebears had been admirals almost since the Revolution. One of them had been the Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. Somebody in each generation had gone into the Navy, which they saw almost as a family business. My grandfather was the one in his generation to go.
He went to Annapolis and graduated, but when he was about 35 or 40, Navy doctors found some abnormality in his heart, apparently from a bout of scarlet fever when he was a child. He had to resign his commission, which was a blow to him, as it cost him his shot at commanding a ship someday, and kept him out of World War II. It was an irony, too, since, whatever might have been wrong with his heart, it didn’t keep him from living until 94.
By this time, he had two children, my mother and her brother. I think--and most of this is guesswork, patched together from a lifetime of listening to my family talk about a great many things; nobody ever explicitly laid any of this out for me--that he hoped his son would follow him into the Navy. That was a lost cause. My uncle had a rebellious streak, and he and my grandfather never really got along. I suspect my uncle chafed as his father tried to steer him into a life he didn’t want.
In the background was my mother. She was the older sister, and the good child. She never talked back, never rebelled, always did what was asked of her--and often more than was asked. If my grandfather had asked her to go to Annapolis, she would have done it without balking, even if she didn’t want to. Of course, she was a girl, so the Navy was shut off to her. It must have frustrated my grandfather beyond words: A girl who would have willingly done anything asked of her, but who couldn’t go into the family business; and a boy who could have, but wouldn’t do as he was asked.
This brings me now to my mother. I think she spent her whole life seeking her parents’ approval and love. Of course, the did love her, but my grandfather, at least, would have been happier if she had been born a boy. She never said anything like that to me, and she idolized, and idealized, her mother and father to such a degree that I don’t think she ever could have even thought such a thing; but I suspect that somehow, deep inside, she knew this was so.
But she always did what they asked of her. Well, almost always. The one time I know of when she went against what my grandfather, at least, would have asked of her was when she married my father. My father was as far from what my grandfather would have thought of as an ideal son in law as I can think. For one thing, he was from Pennsylvania, and my grandfather had grown up hearing tales of the unjust War of Northern Aggression. He was mild mannered and bookish. He was a liberal, and outspokenly so, in a mild, low-key kind of way, if that makes any sense.
He was successful, but not in a way my grandfather would have typically thought of the word. My father had almost graduated from medical school, but a fear of speaking in public had kept him from fulfilling one requirement: giving a speech before a class of students. I don’t know what the subject was to have been. But this was 1942, and back then, schools were less willing to accommodate things like my father’s awful stage fright. He didn’t get his M.D., but he got three M.A.s, and by the time he and my mother wed, he was the assistant librarian at the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins. He would soon become the head librarian at the dental school library at the University of Pennsylvania. But this wasn’t the kind of guy my grandfather would have chosen for his daughter to marry.
And then I came along. I suspect that, for my grandfather, I was a last hope, a shot at having the kind of son he’d always wanted, but had never gotten. Only I didn’t have the family name. My uncle was married, but utterly uninterested in children, so my grandfather saw his line dying out. And there I was, only without the name.
Again, I’m guessing here, but I think my mother named me for my grandfather so the name would carry on. I think it was her almost desperate way to curry the favor with him that she had never quite gotten, as a daughter. My father was, if not appalled, most assuredly dubious. He did his best to head her off, but in the end, he couldn’t sway her, and I got saddled with what has been, all my life, this mild curse. I know it isn’t the same as growing up in a war zone, but it’s been my own kind of hell, even if it’s a low-key one.
You might have picked up on the fact that I haven’t yet written my name once throughout this post. That isn’t an accident. I avoid saying, or even writing, my name whenever I can. I’ve said that I feel like a little part of my soul shrivels and dies every time I speak it aloud. Early on, I learned the trick of spelling my name when asked for it. It works, since I end up having to spell it out anyway, as often as not. It only backfires when somebody asks me how I pronounce it.
All my life, my name has set me apart. Often it’s the first thing anybody knows about me, before they meet me, or even see me. And it marks me as a weirdo. As a child, I fantasized about having a name like everybody else. It was a big legacy for a little kid to tote around on small shoulders.
Early on, other kids began to make fun of my name. My parents had always told me that the best thing to do when people are making fun of you is to ignore them. So I did. When somebody twisted my name into some epithet, I’d sit there, not acknowledging it, seething inside. Most likely my lack of reaction just made me seem even weirder, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I stuck with it. This passivity had another effect, one I only lately came to see and understand, and I’ll get to that forthwith.
So, doubtless, many of you are asking, “Well, if you hate it so much, why don’t you change it?” And that is the other problem I have with my name: It isn’t really my name at all. I never felt, and still don’t feel, like I have any choice about it. As odd as that sounds, that’s how it feels to me, for many reasons. One reason is that it comes from my mother’s family, and was clearly important to her and to her father. It was a name given to me to honor my family, which seems to make it something bigger than I am. It isn’t only a name, it’s a legacy, a responsibility. I couldn’t change it without metaphorically spitting in their faces.
Beyond that, I name isn’t something that people choose themselves; it’s something bestowed upon them. We’re passively given our names. We’re at the mercy of other people as babies, sitting helplessly as somebody else chooses for us the name that we will bear all our lives. In essence, I don’t feel like I have any right to change my name. It would be wrong, immoral to arrogate to myself this power that I have no claim to. Some of this sounds irrational. A lot of it is, I know that. I don’t know how to overcome this in my own mind, though.
I think I wrote once on this blog that one of the ways I learned to deal with ADD, before I ever knew I had is, was to never be in control. I learned to be passive. As long as I wasn’t running things, that cut down the likelihood that I’d screw something up. But maybe I got too good at this. Being passive was natural for me already, since I’m fairly low-key and mild by nature. But it can get out of hand, and in my case, it did. So understanding this, feeling like I don’t even have any choice over my own name fits right in.
A few times I tried. When I was in about 6th grade, I wished I had a normal name. I even chose one I wanted to have. But I never did anything about it, since I felt like I had to come up with an excuse to use it, I had to have a defense if anybody asked me what the deal was. And I couldn’t come up with a good enough one that sounded believable. “I hate my name and want a new one,” never even crossed my mind. I had to find a way to claim that this new name was my name, that it was my middle name, or something. I even thought of saying that the new name was my real name, but that I had somehow never known it. That sounds crazy, but then, I was only 11 or 12 years old or so.
By high school, I worked up the guts to try it, and in 11th grade, I did. But I couldn’t stick with it. I told people it was my first name, and that my first name was my middle name. I gave up after a few months, feeling like a liar and a fraud. I never even told my parents what I was doing, either. After all, it was really their name, not mine. They had given it to me, and here I was, committing fraud behind their backs. I felt ashamed at the thought of changing my name, even as I dreamt of having one like other kids’ names.
In college, I tried it again. Here, after all, was a whole new life, with new people who didn’t know me as “the kid with the weird name.” But, again, I gave up after a few months, since I felt like a cheat and a fraud and a liar.
Oddly, even when other kids at school made fun of my name, I never just asked them to stop. I guess I never felt like it was up to me. It wasn’t my name, after all. It identified me, but somehow, it was the property of everybody else but me.
Maybe this sounds crazy. And maybe it is. But crazy or not, that’s how it feels to me. I can’t change my name. It isn’t really mine to change. I can’t even ask people not to make fun of me for it. It isn’t even really mine to do that. It belongs to all of you, to the world, to do with what you will. This seems fatalistic, and it is. I know that. But, right or wrong, that’s how things stand in my mind.
All this means I get to choose between three things. One of them is to change it, but I don’t foresee me ever feeling like I have any authority to do that. The next is to learn to like it, but, come on, if I haven’t yet learned to do that, it isn’t going to happen. That means I get to go with the last choice, which is to deal with this fucking thing and live with the unhappiness it brings. Not a happy ending, but, then, if this is the worst thing I have to deal with in life, I guess I should be fairly happy. And, well, not every tale has a happy ending anyway.
All my life, my name has set me apart. Often it’s the first thing anybody knows about me, before they meet me, or even see me. And it marks me as a weirdo. As a child, I fantasized about having a name like everybody else. It was a big legacy for a little kid to tote around on small shoulders.
Early on, other kids began to make fun of my name. My parents had always told me that the best thing to do when people are making fun of you is to ignore them. So I did. When somebody twisted my name into some epithet, I’d sit there, not acknowledging it, seething inside. Most likely my lack of reaction just made me seem even weirder, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I stuck with it. This passivity had another effect, one I only lately came to see and understand, and I’ll get to that forthwith.
So, doubtless, many of you are asking, “Well, if you hate it so much, why don’t you change it?” And that is the other problem I have with my name: It isn’t really my name at all. I never felt, and still don’t feel, like I have any choice about it. As odd as that sounds, that’s how it feels to me, for many reasons. One reason is that it comes from my mother’s family, and was clearly important to her and to her father. It was a name given to me to honor my family, which seems to make it something bigger than I am. It isn’t only a name, it’s a legacy, a responsibility. I couldn’t change it without metaphorically spitting in their faces.
Beyond that, I name isn’t something that people choose themselves; it’s something bestowed upon them. We’re passively given our names. We’re at the mercy of other people as babies, sitting helplessly as somebody else chooses for us the name that we will bear all our lives. In essence, I don’t feel like I have any right to change my name. It would be wrong, immoral to arrogate to myself this power that I have no claim to. Some of this sounds irrational. A lot of it is, I know that. I don’t know how to overcome this in my own mind, though.
I think I wrote once on this blog that one of the ways I learned to deal with ADD, before I ever knew I had is, was to never be in control. I learned to be passive. As long as I wasn’t running things, that cut down the likelihood that I’d screw something up. But maybe I got too good at this. Being passive was natural for me already, since I’m fairly low-key and mild by nature. But it can get out of hand, and in my case, it did. So understanding this, feeling like I don’t even have any choice over my own name fits right in.
A few times I tried. When I was in about 6th grade, I wished I had a normal name. I even chose one I wanted to have. But I never did anything about it, since I felt like I had to come up with an excuse to use it, I had to have a defense if anybody asked me what the deal was. And I couldn’t come up with a good enough one that sounded believable. “I hate my name and want a new one,” never even crossed my mind. I had to find a way to claim that this new name was my name, that it was my middle name, or something. I even thought of saying that the new name was my real name, but that I had somehow never known it. That sounds crazy, but then, I was only 11 or 12 years old or so.
By high school, I worked up the guts to try it, and in 11th grade, I did. But I couldn’t stick with it. I told people it was my first name, and that my first name was my middle name. I gave up after a few months, feeling like a liar and a fraud. I never even told my parents what I was doing, either. After all, it was really their name, not mine. They had given it to me, and here I was, committing fraud behind their backs. I felt ashamed at the thought of changing my name, even as I dreamt of having one like other kids’ names.
In college, I tried it again. Here, after all, was a whole new life, with new people who didn’t know me as “the kid with the weird name.” But, again, I gave up after a few months, since I felt like a cheat and a fraud and a liar.
Oddly, even when other kids at school made fun of my name, I never just asked them to stop. I guess I never felt like it was up to me. It wasn’t my name, after all. It identified me, but somehow, it was the property of everybody else but me.
Maybe this sounds crazy. And maybe it is. But crazy or not, that’s how it feels to me. I can’t change my name. It isn’t really mine to change. I can’t even ask people not to make fun of me for it. It isn’t even really mine to do that. It belongs to all of you, to the world, to do with what you will. This seems fatalistic, and it is. I know that. But, right or wrong, that’s how things stand in my mind.
All this means I get to choose between three things. One of them is to change it, but I don’t foresee me ever feeling like I have any authority to do that. The next is to learn to like it, but, come on, if I haven’t yet learned to do that, it isn’t going to happen. That means I get to go with the last choice, which is to deal with this fucking thing and live with the unhappiness it brings. Not a happy ending, but, then, if this is the worst thing I have to deal with in life, I guess I should be fairly happy. And, well, not every tale has a happy ending anyway.
