What’s in a name?

Tonight, I am in beautiful surroundings but I have lost the right to use my name. So have others in my party whose names are just a little well, shall we call it uneasy for some. The person who has refused us our names went to great lengths to ensure that hers was known to us. The vowels drawn out long and slowly, lovingly, forcefully and the connection with festivity brought to our attention. Just in case we needed a reminder of who she is.

Our names, however must be hard on the tongue or rather hard on the mind that speaks to us slowly and with great attentiveness to our possible slowness. For a few moments, well truth be told it was just under an hour, I stewed and then realized that this experience unsettles precisely because it is no longer one I am accustomed to. Once perhaps, in the time before I claimed and demanded my name.

Once upon a time, in the time before, within the foreign country where I was born and raised, I shortened my name to make it easy on those whose tongues and minds are not as fluent in entering into mutual recognition. And then, the world changed, I changed and the traditions of imposing names and hiding the names given to us with love and careful thought, those traditions changed. It is rarely necessary now in this country to ask people what names they live with when they are with those who see them as beloved, familiar, undangerous, comfortable. It is no longer unusual to expect wisdom and knowledge from someone with a beautiful melodic name, weighted with meaning and history. It has become ordinary to know that those beautiful names with their intricate consonants, long and loving vowels attached to beautiful dusky bodies are not emblems of shame or ignorance. So many of us have changed the traditions of forsaking our names and so many have struggled and won in the learning of them.

Not all have shirked the tradition of stealing the name of the other as the experience of this night has shown. But then too, had the quietening of the names that beat at our core been ordinary and everyday, I would not have stewed nor known to.