WP1: Giving My Name Back To Myself
My own name has been a source of discomfort for me for as long as I can remember. This is a feeling that was initiated by the hesitation and mispronunciation from the majority of people that I have encountered, as they are forced out of the natural routine they have settled so comfortably into upon facing my name. It is human nature to put a name to something, whether an object, a place, a feeling, a person. The urge to identify, label, define, so as not to be left with a blank, an empty hole. As infants we learn basic words to pair with objects — milk, car, cat, dog–until these once foreign entities are no longer abstract, they become second nature. As we grow older we accumulate more and more labels to make sense of the world, including the names of the people around us, until defining our perception of reality becomes such a natural routine that names are taken for granted.
“How do you pronounce that?” the old man at the register asked me as he handed me back my driver’s license, pointing to the line with my name.
I took a deep breath, knowing where this was about to go. “Li-be-lu-la,” I answered.
“Well that’s different,” the man replied with a chuckle.
I shrugged and gave him a forced smile, already halfway out of the door.
This interaction is one of many I have experienced over the course of my life so far. Though the other’s response to my name is not necessarily implicitly rude or hurtful, it has left me internalizing alienation from a young age. According to Paulo Freire in chapter two of his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the banking education system is “based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness [and] transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power” (75). Essentially, banking promotes the hegemony of sameness, influencing naming language, creating a standard language of names. Shaping the notion that there is a “normal” type of name and an “abnormal” type of name. A “standard” and an “unusual.” A “Jane,” for instance, and a “Libelula.” Because of the alienation perpetuated by banking education, I have felt embarrassment, shame, and confusion around my own name, wondering why I didn’t have a “normal.” Thus, throughout my life I have chosen to chop up my name into palatable bite-sized nicknames, essentially hiding behind a wall of white-washing. I’ve felt a need to conform my name because of banking education.
Similar to my experience with the discomfort surrounding my name, Chinese immigrant Jeniffer Wang feels conflicted about her name as well. She writes in her essay, “Orientation Day,” “I stand up and say, ‘My name is Jennifer Wang,’ and then I sit back down. There are no other words that define me as well as those do. No others show me being stretched between two very different cultures and places — the ‘Jennifer’ clashing with the ‘Wang,’ the ‘Wang’ fighting with the ‘Jennifer.’” Wang and I both feel the disturbance of conforming our names to a standard. Yet, this is something one shouldn’t have to ever feel about the foundation of their identity.
A name is not just a way to label and identify. A name is more than just a way to differentiate one person or thing from another. Naming is to understand, to attach meaning and nuance. Names can be deeply rooted in history and culture, whether the name stemmed from an ancestral relative or a significant cultural symbol. They are a crucial, integral part of identity, perhaps even the infrastructure of one’s identity, holding up culture, history, lineage, and individuality all in one. When describing how she engages with her students in the first episode of the Writing Remix Podcast “Stepping Into the Self,” Professor Stephanie Renée Payne says:
“I ask them who they are. I ask them to use their full names… and I ask them why they do not or do use that name. [Then], I tell my students… that my maternal grandmother named me… she was the pioneer of our family by moving the family west. It was not the thing to do. It was scary… I never met this woman. I only know her from stories… but she named me. She named me Stephanie Renée. And I know that she instilled in me this sort of first-generation of Angelino that she helped to bring to this state. And I embody that, I wear that. So, Stephanie Renée is important to me.” [0:00–3:56].
Stephanie Renée’s story is one example of how a name can carry deeper meaning and history underneath the surface, laying the groundwork of identity. Stephanie Renée’s name was given to her by her spirited grandmother and, in turn, instilled in her the bravery that her grandmother carried in the previous generation. In embracing with full arms the name her grandmother gave her, Renée is practicing self-actualization. She knows what to do in order to gain a sense of fulfillment in her identity- she is secure and unashamed in her name, and as a result, in who she is.
In my case, my name was given to me by my mother, a free-spirited woman who immigrated to the United States from Cuba in the early nineties. As a result, my name is a reflection of the culture and the character I have inherited from my mother. She described to me that my name, meaning “dragonfly” in my her native language of Spanish, exemplifies the feeling of freedom and spontaneity a dragonfly feels when taking flight, as well as the free spirit my mother experienced growing up in a Caribbean culture full of music and dancing and physical touch that she wanted to instill in me despite my being born and brought up in a different country.
I can take Renée’s practice of self-actualization and apply it to my own circumstance. I can take pride in my name. Not just wear it, but embody it. Meaning embodying my Cuban culture. No longer “halfway out the door” from taking action and confronting why others may view my name as “different.” Taking the time to explain the true pronunciation. In her book Gathering Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer declares, “the names we give ourselves are a powerful form of self-determination, of declaring ourselves sovereign territory.” By feeling unashamed of my name, I will reach self-actualization. I will give my name back to myself.
Works Cited
Robin Wall Kimmerer. (2003). Gathering Moss: a Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Oregon State University Press.
Names and Identity. (n.d.). Facing History and Ourselves. https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-1/names-and-identity
GoodTherapy — Find the Right Therapist. (2019). Goodtherapy.org. http://www.goodtherapy.org
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Academic. (Original work published 1968)
Writing Remix Podcast Episode 1: Stepping Into the Self
