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ravenI have been thinking a lot recently about names. Partly this is because the sunshine and change of job have given me the energy to work at languages again, so I'm thinking about words and grammar and such more generally, and partly this is because of this being the Year of Weddings. I witnessed a deed poll at a wedding recently, and then the other week, during Maria's wedding ceremony, it was very obvious that the somewhat smarmy officiant said her first name at normal volume, but her patronymic and surname very softly.
I think you must already love your friend, if you're there to see them married in the second row with your tissues out, but if possible, I loved her a little more at that moment: she had been speaking softly, but she said her names clearly and loudly for the world to hear. The officiant had the grace to look embarrassed.
For reasons I have explained many times, I have a Western, Scottish use-name. I have my surname as well, though; it's not at all a Western name. As this is a public post, I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's the same surname as a lady in a television show whom you all love. Which is, okay, me being flip, but also that is important: I look back now, and think, if I had been in primary school and there had been a woman in a TV show whom all my friends loved, with the same name as me, well. Imagine how life would have been, then.
I hated my surname then. I hated it for being weird, for always having to spell it, for never knowing how I ought to say it, for being weird weird weird. I was twenty years old by the time I sat up and said, thought, I have one of the commonest names on the planet. There are heads of state with my name, there are mathematicians and poets and sports people and there's also me and I am a person too. But before then, I had learned to mispronounce it - to say it like white people say it. Because then they will spell it right; then it's only one letter different from a proper white-person name, it's almost a real name. Then I won't be weird any more.
I will never change my surname. I don't plan to take my partner's name on marriage; I am unlikely to change it for any other reason. So here, today, I have decided: I am going to say my name the way it should be said. If people mispronounce it, I will correct them; if people mispronounce the name of the nice lady in the TV show, I will correct them, gently, and go gently named true.
And if they can't spell it, they can look it up.
I think you must already love your friend, if you're there to see them married in the second row with your tissues out, but if possible, I loved her a little more at that moment: she had been speaking softly, but she said her names clearly and loudly for the world to hear. The officiant had the grace to look embarrassed.
For reasons I have explained many times, I have a Western, Scottish use-name. I have my surname as well, though; it's not at all a Western name. As this is a public post, I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's the same surname as a lady in a television show whom you all love. Which is, okay, me being flip, but also that is important: I look back now, and think, if I had been in primary school and there had been a woman in a TV show whom all my friends loved, with the same name as me, well. Imagine how life would have been, then.
I hated my surname then. I hated it for being weird, for always having to spell it, for never knowing how I ought to say it, for being weird weird weird. I was twenty years old by the time I sat up and said, thought, I have one of the commonest names on the planet. There are heads of state with my name, there are mathematicians and poets and sports people and there's also me and I am a person too. But before then, I had learned to mispronounce it - to say it like white people say it. Because then they will spell it right; then it's only one letter different from a proper white-person name, it's almost a real name. Then I won't be weird any more.
I will never change my surname. I don't plan to take my partner's name on marriage; I am unlikely to change it for any other reason. So here, today, I have decided: I am going to say my name the way it should be said. If people mispronounce it, I will correct them; if people mispronounce the name of the nice lady in the TV show, I will correct them, gently, and go gently named true.
And if they can't spell it, they can look it up.
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no subject
on 2012-04-02 12:48 pm (UTC)