My Name is...

What's in a name? ~ 

Photo: Yaron Kidron

Everyone has a name. Or, perhaps, several. Our first identifier, which might have been peanut, bug, or bean, evolves into a name written on a birth certificate that is then properly filed and added to a government registry. A name that some parents agonize over for months and months only to end up calling their child...something else. "Hi, meet Joe, but please call him Willy." 

That's right. I am talking about a most cringeworthy notion. The nickname. It's the name tag that gets stuck on your back in some unreachable spot, and the moment you peel it off, another one with a different version of your name is slapped on. Some find their nicknames enduring, and some find them just plain itchy. My back is red from all the scratching. If you yell 'Beaner' across the store and use echolocation while you do it, I'm not going to answer. Pinging that name around the grocery was an automatic 'shelter in place and wait till my mom stops embarrassing me alert.' Bean, Beanie, Beaner all leave a rash! No, thank you. I think I was thirty by the time I asked my mom why she named me Jeannine if she would never use it. 

I am not a legume. Please stop calling me one.

And there are also the names we call ourselves when we screw up. Seems there is an endless litany of those. I'd like to know why we can call ourselves 'idiot' so easily but stumble over anything positive. (But, maybe I'm just stupid? )

When I took modern dance classes in San Francisco, one of the teachers kept calling me Joy. Even after I told her my name twice, maybe three times. She confessed it was because I danced with so much joy that she thought Joy was my name. I was flattered. But, it was still not my name. Or was it?

With nicknames that express our good qualities, I can almost get on board with those. Almost.

How many different names do we go through in our lives? When I was developing the character names for my book, I considered how their names might be shortened or what kind of nickname they would have based on their personality. In real life, who calls someone the same thing all the time? Perhaps that's an arrogant assumption, and I lack the discipline to stay consistent, but fictional characters should reflect how we treat each other. Right? I think they should be relatable. But maybe I'm being way too J'Nerd(y) about this whole thing.

I have also been called a coordinate. Don't know that I like it, but it's clever. Every time I hear J-9, an image of a classic game immediately comes to mind, and I almost want to shout, "You sank my battleship!" but I've learned over the years that such remarks only earn a 'you're weird, and I'm going to put some distance between us now' expression.

I admit, for many of my friends (not all, sorry Z--oh wait...), the better I get to know them, the shorter their names become. I don't call all my close friends by a letter, but I can't resist tinkering with their names in some way. How ironic coming from the person who grew up hating their nickname. Unless you have a melodic, longer name--those trip across my tongue like a song, and I have to restrain myself from singing the name when I say it. My Grama B used to add a sing-song lilt to my name, starting off with Jeannine-nee but eventually shortening it to Neenie. And, if you didn't know, Neenie is the same phonetically as the name for a Hawaiian goose. So, more of a step sideways than up in the nickname department. 

Many authors have pen names, their noms de plume, but dang it if I didn't spend three weeks in preschool getting all the N's in Jeannine in the WRITE place. Of course, after I got my first name correct, I winced at the thought of trying to spell Gersbach. After I got married and took Charles as my last name, I was excited that most people could spell it. So, why do I say it with a southern drawl when asked for my last name over the phone? I don't have an accent--any kind of accent! 

But, I successfully confuse them enough that they call me Mrs. Chows.