You see me across the room. I’m building up to complimenting your suit (very GQ for a summer housewarming party,) or maybe to applaud your choice of brightly patterned wool socks battling the sleet grey fury of winter in the mid-Atlantic. I settle on asking about your necklace. It’s the necklace your dad gave you after you broke your big toe while away at a soccer day camp. I listen to the story, committing it to memory. We exchange names. I’ll remember your name, it’s simple. It’s nothing I’ve never heard. It’s biblical.

You excuse yourself midway through the conversation to say first, my teeth are so white, wow, and second, you’re bad with names and faces. I hear this all the time and so I don’t take it personally. So I say my name again knowing that we will meet another time and you’ll say Jeena, Jahnah, Joan, Janet, Jane. You’ll know me for years and spell my name in your phone wrong, in Facebook chats despite the fact that my name is right above next to a green light.

My name is Janea Kelly. Juh. Nay. Jenae. Kelly’s easy. R., Grace, Slater. It’s like I have two first names but it’s just a collection of letters. An Irishmen happened somewhere in my family history and the last name stuck. It may have been romantic or a traumatic happening but given the history of the women who share my name—it was probably something best not to dwell on for too long.

Sometimes I introduce myself as Kelly. It’s easier. In ways, it feels more like me, my public persona, the girl who leaves the house and doesn’t cry ever because she wouldn’t want her drugstore mascara to run. Maybe it’s a demographics game—how many Black women do you know by the name of Kelly? Maybe it just it pairs better with my personality. I’ve thought about this a lot and experimented.

One time a British singer of a band I enjoy (despite the encounter I’m about to relay) ridiculed my first name as he was autographing my Disney princess backpack. He said it was spelt wrong and asked if my mother knew how English worked. I told him there’s a reason Britain lost the world and no one gave a shit what they thought about the English language. I was amused though. I guess I got off lucky being a twenty-year-old woman with a Disney princess backpack. There’s a lot a white man from the countryside of Britain could want to ridicule about a twenty-year-old Black girl, one of an astounding few at his concert, but luckily it was just my name. It was something I was used to defending.

Growing up I felt limited by my first name Janea, which I loved. Not being able to find my name in a baby book only added to my fears of illegitimacy; I lived in a home with a mom and a dad who were not married. They were sometimes lovers, often bitter enemies, rarely friends. These weren’t thoughts that plagued me too much until I moved to the suburbs to live with an Aunt in the 4th grade. No longer were there girls like me holding on to unique collections of letters that were a syllable short of iambic but no less beautiful.

By 10th grade, watching my classmates assign each other ghetto girl names with the same aghast, hysteria, and derision as they would give themselves prostitute names—street name, pet name—I knew I would never experience the same pedestrian experience of being an Abigail or Ashley. When I called myself Kelly it’s not like I suddenly felt a propriety that was lost to Janea. It was withheld.

No one ever remembers my first name. They think it’s beautiful though. They tell me how much they like it as they call me Janet or tell me about a woman in their work study who spells it with a G after stretching the a of my name too long.

Imagine Forrest Gump was chewing food while shouting after Jenny, imagine that just before he called her name, the urge to bite into salt water taffy, a nougat filled chocolate, or peanut brittle overwhelmed him. He shoves the piece of sweet confection into his mouth while running after the object of his affection. Shouting. Juuuuuuuuuuuuh-nay.

If you say my first name too quickly, it’s very similar to a casual way of saying goodbye in Japanese. You’d usually use it with very close friends, peers. It omits the “see you” and it’s not even quite a “later” but more of a “all right, then.” It’s unlike something very formal where you’d apologize for going before me and removing your presence so soon. You expect to see this person soon but for now, it’s okay, later.

So here you are with my name in your mouth. If you roll around the four syllables you’re bound to taste my mother’s concern that her lover’s affection would go without proper testament and so, like Hephaestus, she toiled with the iron wrought letters Jeanette before bringing forth my name, sharp and short, like Zeus’s lightning bolt. It’s one letter from being plain Jane and one wrong turn from an ambitious Janet. Well-meaning Janea, often goes well with “She meant well. What she means is.” I’m well-meaning but never quite meaningful.

So sit with me a while. Taste my name. Say it. Recall it like your favorite coffee beans soaking in a French press. Think back to the year of your favorite wine that sat out on the porch—however did that happen?—spoiling quietly, oxidizing, losing its color. Say my name, it’s slick and hot like my mother’s lover’s tongue, and it’s in your mouth.

Perhaps you’ll think twice of saying my name on the first date because it’ll be a sensory overload of coffee, spoilt wine, lover’s spit and salt water taffy. You’re somewhere between an earnest and loveable icon of American cinema and saying goodbye, in another language, a Ciao so carefree and convinced you’ll see me tomorrow, that you don’t bother to look back at me waving to your back.