11.17.2010

Names Matter

Sorry, Bill, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on the whole rose thing. It might smell as sweet if we called it something else but there's nothing that says it wouldn't smell completely different and totally horrible.

Names matter.  Yes they're given to us by someone else but at some point in everyone's life there comes a time when you own your name, change it, adjust it or resign yourself to it. Nicknames, pet names, last names, etc are all avenues towards taking the biggest identifier any of us have and making it our own.  There's the name your family calls you which might be different from the name or names your friends use and your significant other could easily have their own special name for you which you may or may not want your coworkers to refer to you by. Names are given to us because today's society requires us to have them from the start and we're not yet advanced to do the job ourselves. But power over your name can be achieved and should never be given up.

I don't love my name but it's mine and I guard the identity it helps create for me. I have many nicknames but none of them come free of charge.  I can't 100% stop anyone from calling me what they want but I can and do make it known what I want them to call me. Each one is a marker of certain times and places and the doors to those places are carefully guarded.

Spelling is important too. My FB status today, brought on by a frustrating work episode that has also inspired this post, was Christina =/= Cristina=/=Christine. It wasn't my hands that put Christina on my birth certificate but in my 30 years on this earth it's become mine.

Maybe it's just Christina's that aren't as sweet if called something else (and as a side note, dear Bill, I think we're also all too smart to fall for a boy who was in love with someone else mere hours before meeting us) or spelled a different way but I like to think there's a power in every name and every person who has that name owns that power in their own unique way.

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