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what's in a name?
Jan. 4th, 2003 09:40 ama couple of years ago, a thread arose on a now-defunct website about the mental associations we have with names. sometimes it's just something personal -- the name "Kevin" will always remind me of a particular Kevin, for instance. sometimes it's something cultural, i.e., in the US at least, names like Edna and Harold carry geeky and/or old-fashioned connotations. Lola sounds sexy to us, for whatever reason. Jake sounds tough and cool. you get the idea.
i wonder if this is why so many of us -- especially of the nerdy persuasion -- start going by other names as teenagers. it's a way not only to rebel against parents, but to choose a name whose connotations appeal to us, as though by changing our names we can change ourselves. and perhaps we can, who knows?
these days, i like my name: Meredith Laurel Tanner. it sounds very dignified and adult. it looks great on a resume. but it was a bit cumbersome for a kid, so my parents called me Muffy. (and before you decide this would be a hilarious thing to tease me with, i have very painful and unpleasant associations with that name, and it would not be funny.) naturally, i hated this with a passion. i can guess why my mother chose that, though -- it was a preppy sort of name, and that was what she wanted for me.
when i was in junior high school, i started hanging out with three other girls who were really into the Beatles, and we all went by the name of a Beatle. i picked Ringo, because i thought it sounded cool, and i went by that for a couple of years. my parents hated it, which only made it better. pretty soon, though, i started thinking it was lame, and i wanted something that sounded more feminine and mysterious. so i insisted that everyone call me Gypsy.
oh man, did that one ever stick. there are people who still call me that, 20 years later. and it carried definite connotations. it was my username when i first got on the net, and i used to get email from guys speculating on what i looked like. they'd always guess i was petite, olive-skinned, with long black hair and dark eyes. Gypsy was very popular -- Ringo had made a few friends, but everybody knew Gypsy. i used it as my performing name too, and that also grabbed people's attention.
somewhere in there, though, it started to feel really silly and pretentious to me. it was the nickname a dorky teenager would choose for herself, not the sort of thing i wanted to be called as an adult. and so i changed my username online to "merde", and started going by Meredith in meatspace. over time, some people have started actually calling me "merde", and that's ok with me, but it's not something i ever intended to be a real nickname. it was just a funny username. and, as i say, i like my name these days.
in that thread on the website about names, several people said the name Meredith sounded snotty to them, and they'd be less inclined to like someone with that name. ever since, i've been wondering if that could be part of why i've had so much trouble making new friends since i left the DC area (which was shortly after i stopped going by Gypsy). i personally don't think it sounds "snotty". i think it sounds like a serious name, an adult name. but i would have to agree that it's not a fun name. nor is it casual, which is something our society seems to value very highly. anyone who's got serious-sounding name -- or one with more than one syllable -- knows how compulsively people assign nicknames, as though the burden of speaking a multisyllabic name is simply too onerous to be borne.
so i wonder. could it be that insisting on going by my full name makes me seem less approachable somehow? either because it sounds "snotty", or because not having a nickname seems unfriendly somehow, or perhaps a combination of the two? what would happen if i tried going by a different name? there are shortened versions of Meredith -- Merry is the most common, and i hated it for years and years but find it doesn't seem so awful anymore. maybe the next time i go somewhere i'm not already known -- a new job, or a convention away from home, or something -- i'll try going by that and see if people react to me differently. it'd be an interesting experiment.
so what do you think of my name? what do you think of your own? do you like it? hate it? wish people would call you something else? do you go by a name that's not even related to your real name? how did that start, and are you still comfortable with it?
i wonder if this is why so many of us -- especially of the nerdy persuasion -- start going by other names as teenagers. it's a way not only to rebel against parents, but to choose a name whose connotations appeal to us, as though by changing our names we can change ourselves. and perhaps we can, who knows?
these days, i like my name: Meredith Laurel Tanner. it sounds very dignified and adult. it looks great on a resume. but it was a bit cumbersome for a kid, so my parents called me Muffy. (and before you decide this would be a hilarious thing to tease me with, i have very painful and unpleasant associations with that name, and it would not be funny.) naturally, i hated this with a passion. i can guess why my mother chose that, though -- it was a preppy sort of name, and that was what she wanted for me.
when i was in junior high school, i started hanging out with three other girls who were really into the Beatles, and we all went by the name of a Beatle. i picked Ringo, because i thought it sounded cool, and i went by that for a couple of years. my parents hated it, which only made it better. pretty soon, though, i started thinking it was lame, and i wanted something that sounded more feminine and mysterious. so i insisted that everyone call me Gypsy.
oh man, did that one ever stick. there are people who still call me that, 20 years later. and it carried definite connotations. it was my username when i first got on the net, and i used to get email from guys speculating on what i looked like. they'd always guess i was petite, olive-skinned, with long black hair and dark eyes. Gypsy was very popular -- Ringo had made a few friends, but everybody knew Gypsy. i used it as my performing name too, and that also grabbed people's attention.
somewhere in there, though, it started to feel really silly and pretentious to me. it was the nickname a dorky teenager would choose for herself, not the sort of thing i wanted to be called as an adult. and so i changed my username online to "merde", and started going by Meredith in meatspace. over time, some people have started actually calling me "merde", and that's ok with me, but it's not something i ever intended to be a real nickname. it was just a funny username. and, as i say, i like my name these days.
in that thread on the website about names, several people said the name Meredith sounded snotty to them, and they'd be less inclined to like someone with that name. ever since, i've been wondering if that could be part of why i've had so much trouble making new friends since i left the DC area (which was shortly after i stopped going by Gypsy). i personally don't think it sounds "snotty". i think it sounds like a serious name, an adult name. but i would have to agree that it's not a fun name. nor is it casual, which is something our society seems to value very highly. anyone who's got serious-sounding name -- or one with more than one syllable -- knows how compulsively people assign nicknames, as though the burden of speaking a multisyllabic name is simply too onerous to be borne.
so i wonder. could it be that insisting on going by my full name makes me seem less approachable somehow? either because it sounds "snotty", or because not having a nickname seems unfriendly somehow, or perhaps a combination of the two? what would happen if i tried going by a different name? there are shortened versions of Meredith -- Merry is the most common, and i hated it for years and years but find it doesn't seem so awful anymore. maybe the next time i go somewhere i'm not already known -- a new job, or a convention away from home, or something -- i'll try going by that and see if people react to me differently. it'd be an interesting experiment.
so what do you think of my name? what do you think of your own? do you like it? hate it? wish people would call you something else? do you go by a name that's not even related to your real name? how did that start, and are you still comfortable with it?
