What's in a Name?
Well, everything actually
My name is Jacynth.
Not Jacqueline. Not Jocelyn. Not Jasmine. Seven letters, two syllables. Many meanings: tragic Greek figure, apocalyptic gemstone, fragrant flower, but also — one part Jaime and one part Cynthia.
If you ask my parents, they’ll tell you that they made up my name. By combining the Ja in Jaime (anglicized) and the cynth from Cynthia, they came up with a name they loved enough to give to their very first child together. This is usually the first story I tell strangers whenever I meet them. My own personal lore that recounts an epic and mercurial love. The context I come from. I think it's nice that whenever I introduce myself, I also introduce them.
That no matter where we are, we're together.
It’s true that I used to hate my name, people almost never get it on the first seven or so tries. When I was little and it was time for attendance in class I always knew when my name was about to be called. The teacher would visibly stumble when they got to my place on the roll call. They’d squint their eyes, absolutely puzzled and either say, “I know I’m gonna get this wrong” before rattling off a litany of incorrect pronunciations or simply resort to calling out my last name instead.
The whole time I’d wince with embarrassment. Petrified by the slight inconvenience my name had caused. What I couldn’t see though, was the vibrance it brought to the classroom monotony. The way it gloriously disrupted the dull hum of unremarkable names around it. The beauty of it’s refusal to conform to make itself comfortable in a lazy mouth. Folly of youth I suppose.
I spent many years wishing for a different name. A more traditionally feminine name. A more common name. A more white name. An easier name. I don’t know. There were nearly eight Hannahs, Elizabeths, Abbys and Emilys in my classes and back then I would’ve given anything to be one of them.
When I was in second grade my art teacher took one look at my name and said she was going to call me Jazz. She didn’t ask. She just declared it. I don’t know why I agreed but I did. Jazz was cool. Jazz was short and sweet. Jazz was uncomplicated. My friends could call me Jazz.
Maybe more people would want to be my friend if they could just call me Jazz.
Jazz swallowed me. I signed my artwork in the bottom right corner, Jazz. I closed out letters, Jazz. I ended yearbook entries H.A.G.S. Jazz. I made it my username. I put in as my contact when I gave away my number. I scribbled it in my notebooks. I liked the ease it afforded me, even if deep down somewhere I knew it reduced me somehow.
Whenever I told people my name, they’d inevitably mispronounce it. Adding in or remove letters. Rearranging them sloppily. Misplacing emphasis and accents. My mother would be ashamed if she heard the bastardizations I sometimes answered to. Too afraid to advocate for the correct pronunciation. I didn’t like the way people handled my name so carelessly. So it was easier to take away their chance to. I clung to Jazz for years.
It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I consciously shook off the easy going alter ego my teacher had given me. Sometime while I was in college as my frontal lobe was kicking into overdrive, I was hit with the realization that my name, my true name, is worth inconveniencing people.
I was sitting the university library working on a paper or studying for an exam, I can’t remember. I do however, remember being stressed. I took a break from whatever I was cramming for and went down to the first floor Starbucks to get a little pick me up. I waited impatiently for my order. When it was ready, the barista, who had up until that point been moving at the speed of light, looked at the name on the cup, befuddled. I knew the look. I’d grown up with it. I braced for embarrassment. She looked at the crowd of customers, then back at the cup. She grimaced. “I’m not even gonna try to pronounce that.” I quickly grabbed my stupid frappachino, and went back to the private study room to cry.
It could’ve been the mounting stress from exam week, but of all the metaphorical injuries I’d endured throughout the years due to my name, that moment, in that makeshift Starbucks, with that random unmalicious barista, hurt me the deepest.
From that point on I made it a point to force people to call me the name my parents gave me. I vowed to stand up straight and look people in the eye when I told them my name. To take the time to repeat it two, three, ten times if I had to. To spell it out. To break it down phonetically. To not let go of the handshake until they got it right.
“Give your daughters difficult names. Names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name does not allow me to trust anyone who cannot pronounce it right.”
Warsan Shire
There was a story I loved very much when I was a little girl about a little mouse named Chrysanthemum. She adores her name because it was intentionally given to her by her loving parents, that is of course, until she goes to school and is horribly teased about it. Without spoiling what I consider to be one of the greatest children’s books of all time, by the end of the story Chrysanthemum knows just how special her name is, no matter what her classmates say.
It took me too long to remember that adorable little mouse, and the moral of her story.
I used to say that I came from a myth that came from a flower that I was just one story of the Earth. I’d like to think I've grown into my name over the years. I take pleasure in my signature. I screenshot all my bylines. I get as many things personalized with my name as I can. I've learned to say it with pride and without apology. For all of its origin stories, and even the ones I've made up along the way.
so elegantly written. i thoroughly enjoyed this and can 1000000% relate to your experience!
Beautiful!! 🫀