Changing Names
WORDS BY TAYGAN BEATON.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweetWhat is in a name? A rose in full bloom may smell as sweet, but what if the rose were decaying? What of the bulbous rose hip? What is a noun without verbs and adjectives? Perhaps the answer lies in my experiences with changing my proper nouns.
When I was 11 (in true 90s fashion) my friends and I abbreviated our first names and added the same letter: M.J, L.J, T.J. When I was 16, this shortened version was convenient for the sports field, and although the “J” is meaningless, my father also likes it.
At 22, I was reading an essay by Lorna B. Williams’ in the book Child Honouring: How To Turn This World Around, and I learned that the people of her community of Indigenous Canadians, the Lil’wat, were given four names throughout their lives. That included a temporary, endearing name at birth, an ancestral name a few months later, a formal name at the time of puberty, and then one final change to mark the transition to community elder. This respect for the stages of a single human’s life resonated with me. So, I promptly changed my name to ‘Doe’ (to honour the deer) in the most official of ways: on Facebook.
When I was 26, I was married. In the months leading up to our wedding we discussed names often, and my loving, adventurous partner suggested we both discard our last names; that we pick our own like the rebels that we fancied ourselves to be. In that same year, the wisest boss I ever had shortened my name to a capital T to stop himself from calling me the wrong name continously.
At 28, I enrolled in university with my ‘preferred’ name, which was the first time I was asked if I preferred a name other than the one allotted by my mother, a liberation I have now come to expect.
What does all this mean? Perhaps I fancy titling my stages of life. But what is in a name really? If you go by a single name for a lifetime this does not indicate your character arc is lacking, or that your stages of growth are less frequent than those of us in a continual state of misnomer flux. I believe a name is worth the weight you give it; perhaps it’s a metaphorical connection to the being that is you. Perhaps it’s something you give up to honour another.
I conclude that by any other name you’d smell as sweet.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This article has been reuploaded and was originally published in 2020.