“If names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.”

— Confucius.

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’Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague,
What’s Montague? It is not hand nor foot,
Nor arm nor face. O be some other name,
belonging to a man!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweet.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II.

Last week I chanced on a lovely essay in Granta that considered what’s in a name. Victoria Princewill discusses the implications of a name in both private and public settings, how its ancestry and its (mis)pronunciations might define you.

“How we name each other echoes how we see each other, and can convey recognition or respect….A lifetime of listening to the public spheres where mouths that mastered names like Aguilera mangled African and Asian ones, and told me in secret coded ways, that there were two kinds of uncommon names. Those that could be pronounced as intended and those that were simply ‘corrected’. The criteria seemed obvious but were not, in fact, always clear.”

This made me think about my own name being mangled by about every other English speaker, simply for lack of knowledge of the German pronunciations. I, of course, never had reason to assume that had to do with racism, or any other deliberate denigration of White European woman; I wonder if that same unfamiliarity is the case for African languages, or if there really is another motive behind it. Then again, we have a pretty unambiguous example of VP Kamala Harris’ name repeatedly mispronounced by political opponents, even after public corrections.

I have dealt with my name in American settings matter-of-factly. I changed the pronunciation to Frederika, which rolls easily of English speakers’ tongues and seems more familiar to them. I immediately call out my last name in the doctors’s waiting rooms before some frowning assistants ready to call me try to pronounce it, inevitably mangling it to Ewer. Their relieved smile and admission they had no clue always eases the encounter.

“Renaming is not always benign. What does it then mean to rename someone publicly, without their consent or even foreknowledge?…. When refashioned by others, through lazy fumbling or comfortable ignorance, one is remade by the unthinking tongues of strangers, and perhaps this is where the crime of it all lies.”

Being named is usually an uncomfortably passive experience. My parents, for example, gave me a big name, hints of a certain class, not a particularly common one. Worse, the spelling was not the conventional one even for that name – if I had received a penny for every corrected spelling, much less pronunciation, I’d be well off. And a classical, long name invites immediate shortening, casting the shadow of a diminutive over your perceptions, confirmed when the long original name is only used with stern voices in times of scolding. Then again, their choice of using the long name or the shortened endearment allows me these days to assess the mood of my conversation partners from the start. And granting the right of use for shortened versions certainly signals to others when I start considering them trusted friends.

I like my name, always have, despite the small complications. I was spared the larger burden of carrying expectations tied to family history. No naming for a forbear, in my case, as is the custom in Jewish culture where ties to the lineage have taken on such an existential role. Or having to live up to the life of the Saints and Martyrs. In the catholic area where I grew up name day was more important than your birthday, although they regularly overlapped. Kids were often named after saints celebrated on they of their arrival. Today, for example is the name day of Anna celebrated in veneration of Saint Anna (usually known as Saint Anne in English), the name traditionally assigned to the mother of the Virgin Mary.

I was not spared the experience of others naming me later in life, sometimes in ways that were not benign. I remember my outrage when, at age 13, vicious fellow boarding school girls decided to label me chick (Kücken) as a reference to my relatively young age and desperate, tearful missing of my mother hen. I remember my contentment when, as a student in law school, a few friends would call me the red Frida, in reference to my politics and a decidedly less upper class, shortened version of Friderike. The joy of special names reserved between lovers is one I cherish, a willingness to engage in true intimacy, no holds barred.

“One’s name is fundamentally also a memory, a reflection of an intimate historical moment, at which an individual was given a symbol through which to be at home within the world – naming as recognition.”

One’s name is also a label, or a brand, a sign, a style, an alias, a nom de guerre, or even an epithet.

What if you do not feel at home in that world, the assignment bestowed upon you? People do change their names, for a variety of reasons, marriage and divorce among them, or ease of use in immigration countries. My mother changed her first name for the last 5 or so years of her life, without ever providing an explanation, even if asked. Nothing with a signifier, either, that would have allowed speculation. Others change names for explicit purposes. Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, comes to mind, or, in more general categories the renaming of things associated with the “enemy” – in WW I, for example, King George V change the German family name to the House of Windsor, the German Spitz was renamed the American Eskimo Dog, and more recently during the war on terror French Fries became Freedom Fries – a list of contemporary American politicians with changed names can be found here. Republican ex-governor Nikki Haley, who was born Nimrata Randhawa, by the way, claimed that she changed her name so it would fit on a yard sign. Hhmmm.

Name change is often an existential part of the transgender experience. I was oblivious to the real life implications, thinking about names just as a personal choice reflecting a changed body. I got a wake-up call when I started reading about it.

“Trans people need accurate and consistent IDs to open bank accounts, start new jobs, enroll in school, and travel. However, the name and gender change process is complicated and sometimes prohibitively expensive. Moreover, many state and federal governments have intrusive and burdensome requirements—such as proof of surgery or court orders—that have made it sometimes impossible for trans people to update their IDs. As a result, only one-fifth (21%) of transgender people who have transitioned according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey have been able to update all of their IDs and records with their new gender and one-third (33%) had updated none of their IDs or records. The survey results also confirmed what most trans people already knew—that gender incongruent identification exposes people to a range of negative outcomes, from denial of employment, housing, and public benefits to harassment and physical violence.”(Ref.)

The National Center for Transgender Equality has acknowledged that and provides a helpful info site for how to go about changing name and gender information on state and federal IDs. How people actually chose a new name is a different story, or more accurately, many stories. I learned there is even a pronoun dressing room where you can try out for size, with all the implications listed. I understand that this is an empowering and affirming step in this context. In contrast to the renaming done by others.

To quote Victoria Princewill one last time:

“To replace a name is to reset a power relation, shift the balance against the person with the name and state quite literally, to them but also anyone listening, that you are not, you are never who you believe yourself to be, if I think otherwise. In a world where everything can be debated, names are contingent on whether the speaker decides they wish to honour your authority over your body, or not.”

It seems to boil down to who does the naming, who respects it and who is willing and able to change it. As with all things aligned along a hierarchy of power, not likely an even distribution.

Let’s end with some comic relief:

Andreas Jankov became MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander. And that’s just the last half of it. The whole name is Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov. Here’s how the rest of the name breaks down: Julius is the name of a famous chimp at the Kristiansand Zoo in Norway; Arn is a Swedish movie about knights, Elessar and Gimli are from Lord of the Rings, and I assume you’re all familiar with MacGyver, Chewbacka (it’s unclear if the misspelling was intentional or not) and Highlander.

Here is a selection of names along those lines – I’ll stick with my own.

Music today is a long chain of associations…. St. Anna is patron saint of carpenters, and here is Josefine Cronholm singing one of The Carpenters famous songs, transposed in one of my favorite movies by Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean and the Jim Henson Company, MirrorMask, where names are not always in accordance with the truth.

Photographs are of unnamed (unnamable?) objects I found some years back on the streets of Ljubljana, Slovenia.