Self Portrait - My Name
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.
It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong. My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild, horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it.
And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window.
At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as my sister's name Magdalena--which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least- -can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza. I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.
My name is Ellie. It's not short for anything, a lot of people ask if my real name is Eleanor or Elizabeth, but my full name is Ellie. I didn't like my name when I was little. I had always wished that my parents named me Alyssa, which is my middle name. I still love my middle name, but I'm glad my name is Ellie. I think it's cute and fits me well. My favorite nickname is when people call me El. It's a special feeling when someone gives you a nickname. A few of my friends call me El, but most of my family and extended family call me El.
ReplyDeleteHi, Ellie! I can relate to you about you're feelings about your first name when you were young, but now you feel like it fits well- I had the same feelings about both my first and middle name when I was young.
DeleteI like how you wrote about you're feelings and how they have evolved and also stayed the same.
Savannah H.
My name is Eliza. It is pretty old, which is some people don't know how to say it correctly. It is my mother's middle name and her grandmother's first and her great-grandmother's first name before it was ever mine. It goes back many generations before me and I have been told it means "God's Light". I don't know if that's true, but I do know many people think it comes from "Eliza Doolittle" or they think my full name is Elizabeth. I have never really liked it because I think it's an odd name. I can never find it on coke bottles or souvenir trinkets anywhere I have been.
ReplyDeletePeople often think my name is short for Elizabeth too! I also can never find my name on coke bottles or on any souvenirs anywhere. It's a special occasion if I can ever find it, but its surprising because I don't think either of our names are super rare.
DeleteI actually knew an Eliza in elementary school! Yes, it is a very uncommon name!
DeleteI am very prideful of my name. I am the third Santino, so I must carry the name with honor. Though I go by “Sonny”, my real name is something I am very thankful for, because I find a particular uniqueness to keeping a first name alive. I often hear of people who talk negatively about their name, or I hear people say they wish they had a different name. The more I hear people talk unfavorably about their name, the more it makes me love my name. My full name, Santino Angelo Parisi means even more to me. My middle name is in memory of my dad’s brother, so I wear my middle name with tremendous pride as well.
ReplyDelete“Hinton; H-I-N-T-O-N,” is a commonly used phrase by me. Not because my last name is a difficult name to pronounce, spell, or even remember- but because people often don’t stop and think about just how simple of a last name it really is. I feel isolated by my need to spell my last name out for a young kid behind the counter of any given restaurant or grocery store. And even though I know that my older brother and I are the only true Hinton’s left where I’m from makes me wonder if I am even supposed to exist at all. My father brought it from far away from here.
ReplyDeleteIn 1997, my parents were married. And with my brother on the way, they were soon to be a little family of Hinton’s. But darkness came along with their second child- me. As I was born screaming and crying at the world, the family of Hinton’s were complete. But there were cracks in the surface. We were a fragile vase- the kind that sat high on the mantle that no one was allowed to touch. Yet somehow over the years we cracked, and cracked and cracked. And in 2017, the vase shattered. My father left and took his simple name back where he came from. And my mother found her maiden name more suitable. And as for me and my older brother; we were Hinton’s.
When people hear my name for the first time, I often hear them say back to me, “Oh that is so pretty!” But to me and my parents, it is more than just a word. It is more of a concept. No one in my family has this name, and I rarely hear of others with it as well. When I see someone with my name, I think “Wow, maybe we have a connection.” My parents didn’t take my name lightly. They knew what my name would be before they ever found out that they were having a girl. There was no question or doubts about naming me this. While it is not a super common name, I still like it’s uniqueness and appreciate it for what it is. My name can be used in different types of phrases. It is even used in a song that says “gotta have faith”. There are other phrases such as have faith. Keep the faith. Faith.
ReplyDelete