The name given to me at birth was based on a mistake that went back two generations.
My father was given for his last name my grandfather's middle name. And so it came to pass that my sisters and I would also inherit my grandfather’s middle name as our last name.
When I got married, I took my husband’s name...
By the time we divorced, there was very little that I liked or respected about him. Yet I was stuck with his name. For sixteen years, whenever I signed my name, or hear it out loud, I cringe. I was as disconnected from it as the shattered marriage by which it came.
I tried once to explain it to my friend Allie letting on that I was thinking of officially changing my name. She gave me a look with one eye brow lifts high and the
other drops so low she looks insane. I giggled as I almost always do when she does it.
“It’s a damn name,” she said. “What do you mean it doesn’t feel like it belongs to you?”
“It’s not mine,” I said. I doesn’t "fit" me,”
She stares at me, “Kit, it’s a name,”
I change the subject.
I’ve known Allie for more than twenty years, long enough to know that she would not understand. How could she when I could not quite put into words a knowing that a name is not just a name. It is identity. It is a connection to self that when taken away, is catastrophic. We are all born into a name, history and a legacy that is an integral part of who we are. I spent years saying I am to a name I didn't want, one with the essence of a failed and tragic marriage. There was no pride
in it.
Whose idea was it that a woman should give away her name in marriage? To give away her SELF? I will not be doing that again.
In one of the stories my father used to tell me, a woman says to a slave who was renamed by his master, “Slave, what name were you given at birth?” The slave thought long and hard...so long that the woman had to repeat the question. After a while, the slave looked at her with sadness, "I can’t remember,” he said. “I’ve been a slave since I was a boy,”
I have never forgotten the story of the slave who who could not remember his name.
Earlier this year, I changed my name to the one that is my birthright. It was not a simple task. I had to change my drivers license, passport, credit cards, contact social security... But it was worth it. Now when I hear my name, when I say it, when I sign it, there is pride and recognition. When I say “I am” it goes beyond personal, its ancestral.
Whatever the legacy, it is mine.
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