So recently, I have been toying around with the concept of renaming myself. I don't feel as though my birth name really fits who I am (and there are more reasons for that than I am going to go into in this blog entry)... it's not a bad name, and I don't hate it -- but it's just not me.
I've been thinking about it, though. What's in a name? why does it feel so important to me to change my name? I talked with my husband about this the other day -- he's known how I feel about my given name for some time now, but that was really the first time I seriously brought up the idea of actually changing it. Granted, I won't be going through the steps to change it legally for some time yet, but I feel like that will be happening at some point.
My husband has Asperger's, which I believe I've mentioned before. The reason I'm mentioning it now is because of his response to me wanting to change my name (both first and middle). He doesn't understand the way I feel about names -- how they have to fit you as a person. To him, a name is (let me see if I can remember his exact wording...) -- "a name is just a jumble of letters that are assigned to you at birth."
However, I feel differently about that than he does (obviously). I'll give an example that holds true to me. If I were planning on adopting a new pet -- whether it's a snake, a hamster, a cat, a dog, or a bird -- I couldn't say to my husband, "Okay, no matter what species of pet we're getting, if it's a girl we're naming it Becky and if it's a boy we're naming it George." (My animals are my children, and human names are just fine for animals as far as I'm concerned.)
It doesn't work that way for me. Becky may not fit a female Pomeranian mix, but it may fit a Maine Coone cat. George may not fit a cockatiel, but it might fit an English bulldog. Or none of them may fit any animal I adopt!! My furbaby, Daniel, was not named until I could come up with a name that both my husband and I agreed upon -- and Daniel fits him very, very well.
But this whole "fitting" thing is very ephemeral... not concrete at all. So you concrete thinkers out there probably won't understand -- and that's okay!! I'm not upset at my husband for not getting it -- but I am glad to know that I'm not the only person out there who feels like names have to fit.
When I was younger (between ages 7 and 14 I think, especially), I could literally spend hours browsing the two baby name books that my parents owned. I loved looking up names -- reading their meanings, how to pronounce them (if the pronunciation was not immediately obvious), their origins, etc.
My current first and middle names are very feminine (at least, in my opinion!) and according to Baby Name Wizard, my first name was the most popular in the 1970s and my middle name was most popular in the 1980s. That makes sense, since I was born in the 1980s. However, I've only know of two other people with my first name -- one, I just heard of during my internship, and I have never met her (but she's older than I am). The other, I grew up seeing in 4-H, but I don't know her well enough to ask her if she shares the frustrations that I feel about my first name.
What I'm really interested in, however, is the "science" that goes behind what makes a name sound good. Addison Reese, for example, sounds good in my head. But Reese Addison doesn't sound half as good -- to me at least. However, my current first name is one syllable, and my middle name is 3 syllables... so clearly, for some names, it works to have a short name as the first name and then a longer middle name. But what is it about Addison Reese that sounds better to me than Reese Addison? I really don't know. I attempted to do some research on the "science" of naming, but sadly, Google did not really provide me with anything terribly useful.
(Although this article was fairly interesting -- about how girls with names that are considered "feminine" tend not to go into the more "masculine" careers in math/science. I kinda wish there were an easy way to calculate "how feminine" a name is... but that would totally depend on what sorts of people you're talking to, I suppose.
Additionally, this article goes into the different name "revolutions" that have occurred over the past 135 years or so -- how in 1880, ten names [George, Mary, William, etc.] accounted for 20% of all American babies... whereas now those same 10 names account for only 2% of all American babies.)
To be continued!!~
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