Names – Part one

I don’t think I have ever been good at saying my name. Somehow it always ends up getting just a little bit tangled on the tip of my tongue. The “r” and the “m” get smooshed together and the “h” is just dangling there and suddenly the rest of the syllables are pushing to get out but the beginning’s already all a mess and whoever I am introducing myself to inevitably makes a confused face.  When I say it the second time, it’s usually smoother, but I also often add “like the word” afterwards to clarify. That and a quick smile seem to get the point across, and my momentary stumbling point is past.

 

My problem lies not in my ability to articulate words – not anymore at least. I did have some problems pronouncing r’s when I was younger, and also I grew up near Boston so I have occasionally forgotten to pronounce them at times – but these are not part of the issue at hand. It’s in that flash as I think of my name and I’m about to say it that I suddenly doubt it. The doubt isn’t fully formed – it’s not like I’m thinking something like “wait, my name is actually Mary!”  It’s just a little suspicion that somehow I’ve chosen the wrong set of syllables, and those aren’t the right sequence of sounds to represent me.

 

I’ve had trouble introducing my name for as long as I can remember. At times I’ve gone through phases where it hardly seems to be a big deal, but at other times it seems like I have to go through three tries with each new person before they actually hear what I’m trying to say. Sometimes I can’t get it across correctly and I just stop trying, leaving the person addressing me by whatever strange sounds they heard.

 

Perhaps there’s some deep psychoanalysis to follow this tick to its deepest root, but it probably just boils down to the fact that I’ve always had a little bit of a complicated relationship with my name.

 

First, let me say that I think it is a great name. It has a great meaning, it is not too common, yet it’s also not too strange, not difficult to spell (okay there is sometimes an e that people try to sneak in there).  It’s just different and creative without pushing a boundary of unnecessarily innovative. When I was in elementary school, I wasn’t a particularly big fan of it being so different (and long!) but I got over than probably by the age of 8. I wouldn’t trade it for any other name nowadays.

 

Recently, I realized that people I’m close with hardly ever call me by my full name. There are a few exceptions; however, generally speaking, sooner or later all of my friends seem to end up calling me by a nickname. (This is also excluding the common stage after learning my name in which people refer to me as “Melody”. I would say that about 30% of people go through this stage.) The nicknames my friends have given me are impressively varied, considering how many of them are plays on my name itself and yet are distinct permutations. I have never introduced myself with a nickname – although I do readily sign letters with them and claim them as my own. Still, is the prevalence of nicknames in my life why I sometimes doubt that I’ve remembered the right set of syllables to refer to myself with? Maybe, or maybe it means nothing after all. At this point, I am happy simply to have friends, and I am happy to have them address me as they please.

 

Something happened when I was 18 that further changed my dynamic with my name. The previous discussion has been about my name as I knew it before I was 18… for the most part. There was another hidden piece that I hadn’t given up on disliking, and continued to hang around as an appendix to my name that I tried not to find horribly awkward: my middle name. My middle name is Shou-Ann. I distinctly remember one instance when I couldn’t remember how to spell it in second grade and wrote it as “Sow-Ann”, which later filled me with burning shame to know that I called myself a pig (I think I looked the word up in the dictionary after the incident). I learned how to spell it, and tried not to make a big deal about how alien and meaningless it was, despite that it was a snippet integral to retrieving my identity on official paperwork. I went through a phase where I casually touted it more as “Ann” – which still felt uncomfortable – but mostly I would just say, “My middle name is Shou-Ann. It’s Chinese,” and hope whoever asked was satisfied with that because I didn’t have more that I wanted to say about it.

 

When I was 18, I took my first Chinese class. With some language classes, students get names in the target language. Chinese classes are particularly adamant about this because names need to be transliterated in Chinese characters. Suddenly the dangling appendix of my name had a purpose. I metamorphically removed it from where I put it in the shadows, dusted it off and examined it in the light. I really learned the characters for it; I really learned how to pronounce it. And suddenly, I was using it. All the time. Soon it wasn’t anything uncomfortable but like just another one of my nicknames – a familiar series of syllables that catches my attention.

 

My Chinese name is more than a nickname to me now – it’s just part of my name. Not a stunted tailbone portion, but a fully-fledged-in-its-own-right piece of my name. The transition first happen when I studied abroad in Beijing under a language pledge where we could only speak Chinese. People referred to me solely with this name, and I regularly told people that it was my name all the time with no big pomp and circumstance. Well, that’s not entirely true either – while both the characters of my name are simple characters, it’s not a particularly common name, and especially not for girls. And quite possibly there’s still some hint of an accent when I say it. So I often end up clarifying the characters. But then again, it’s nothing more worse than when I stumble as I introduce myself in English.

 

to be continued…

[Blog-a-thon is turning out to be a pretty big challenge. Trying to keep things interesting!]