In front of the rabbi’s
Old Chevrolet station wagon
They saw engraved words on
The wall. They were the words
Of a minor prophet, a disciple
Of Isaiah’s, they later discovered,
A proponent of peace and ‘Walking
Humbly with your God’…they liked
The way the vowels rolled simply
Off the tongue—Little did they realize?
The annoyance, mispronunciations
And taunting that would follow
Later, there was a Bar Mitzvah and
My namesake’s identity came up
Again and I spoke to his philosophy
To the best of my abilities as if I were
Supposed to be an embodiment—
Outside of the synagogue, it was a
Different story, non-Jewish friends,
Teachers, librarians, strangers
Wanted to call me Mike, Michael,
Mikhail, Mick, anything but the two syllable
Sound that seemed so simple to me
When kids took Earth Science
In junior high, they learned of
Its’ other definitions—
I was the shiny crystalline stuff
They saw embedded in the sidewalk
Or the stuff they sprayed in their shoes
To ward off foot fungus
Either way, they would step on the shiny sparkles
That were me and laugh
Until I would openly smirk or grimace—
Upon reading this tale, someone would
Play me a miniature violin
Of melancholy and point a finger,
Yet, to this very day, people want to say
My name, no matter how obscure or popular
It might get, something other than what it is
Even my friend, Abdullah, and his name
Is Abdullah, and you would think he’d have
No excuse but to learn, calls me Mike no
Matter how often I correct him—

by Micah Zevin
Bronx, NY

The pseudonym Nickie was bestowed upon me by… I have no idea actually. There wasn’t much use of my given name, Nicole, in non-official circumstances until some time in junior high school. Official referring to a large array of situations ranging from botched boarder crossings to an agitated mother who uses the entire tri-nomial in extreme cases. Upon giving your child a handle doesn’t it seem prudent to stop and ruminate on the implications of said name?

Rhyming is the most basic - applying the term basic in every meaning possible - linguistic escapade that trickles in from the dark corners of the mind. Does Nickie rhyme with anything appealing to a pre-adolescent Homo sapien? Roll it over a few times and see what you come up with. I’m wagering a red shoelace and half a pack of cigarettes that there’s nothing complimentary to a pubescent individual that comes to mind in the first five seconds. Upon hearing a name we automatically run it through our own mental relational program to shape and attach it to something that we can remember whether it’s via flattery or humiliation.

The taunting was minor among my cohorts until vocabularies expanded and launched into new realms including words that relate to anatomy, sexuality, texture, and any combination therein. It just so happens that when a concept is new we try to apply it to as many aspects of life as possible. I must have had some grasp on that from an early age since, in the name of minimizing the possibilities of mockery, it became clear to me in the first inklings of adolescence that I needed to revert to my given name. Besides, only strippers are named Nickie.

Nicole “Nickie” Rane Edmison
Oakland, CA

We haven’t been born yet. Our parents are stretched out on the couch in front of the television in their new house, quiet street, nice suburb of Boston. My mother’s socked feet rest in my father’s lap; her pregnant belly rounder than either of them thought it would be.

It is evening. Outside, the sun feels so close, we think it is setting on our parent’s new life, just for us. A light breeze makes curtains flutter and lavender shadows begin to slink across the freshly painted walls. The lawn outside is green and mowed. A yet-to-be-used swing set sways gently in the wind. Small children squat in driveways nearby, playing, digging, babbling. They will be our friends later.

There will be two of us soon. Our parents want to be surprised – the room upstairs is gender neutral. Four names are written on note cards and spread out on the floor: Lisa, Robert, Sarah, Jeffrey. Our middle names have meaning, but our first names are just names our parents like: they way they sound, they way they look. Maybe they can imagine calling us nicknames: Lis, Rob, Sar, Jeffie. Maybe they can imagine scolding us, and these names are not so harsh when said in a mouthful of disappointment. They tear off small sections of The Boston Globe, scrunch them up into tiny balls, throw them at the cards on the floor. These will be their babies. This is where they’ll play.

We know better than our parents. We know which names we want. When we come out we will scream and cry but inside we are laughing, we are squirming, we are playing. We are best friends. We are what every parent wants, but we are our parent’s children, and we can’t wait to meet them. We know they will love us. We long for their arms and their hair and the cribs that wait for us upstairs, fluffed with pillows and stuffed animals that family and friends have been sending and sending.

It’s the first of the year when we are born. For miles and miles, all across the country, streamers ripple, horns are blown, people kiss under twinkling lights. In the small, dark hospital room, the air is plush with nervous breaths. Will we be boys or girls?

My brother comes out first. “It’s boys!” the doctor calls.

“Jeffrey,” my father says, holding him for the first time. “Jeff.”

I am inside, and I am ready. I can’t wait to show them who I am. My brother has paved the way for me, and I slide out easily, but wrong. I’m upside down – the doctor turns me over and gasps.

“It’s a girl!”

“Jackpot!” my father says. He waves his arms and claps his hands. Jeffrey wails. Our four grandparents, standing right outside the room behind the door, squeeze their smiles through the tiny window.

“Name?” the doctor says.

“Lisa,” my mother says. My mother cries, and so do I.

by Lisa Gordon
San Francisco, CA

There are two stories to my name.  The mom story and the dad story, and I’m not sure if either are actually true.

The mom story goes a bit like this: Once, a long, long time ago (1982 to be exact) a very pregnant woman was enjoying a quiet walk through a field.  (No joke, my mom really was walking through a field.  She used to work at a living history museum as the blacksmith’s wife, so she actually did things like walking through fields and baking pies and spinning wool.)  She walked through the field, this pregnant woman, and thought about names for her unborn baby.  Edmund James, Tiffany Rose, Jacob Emerson, Emma Rose…  Emma Rose… Emma Rose.  And LO AND BEHOLD, the mother knew the baby would be a girl and she would be called Emma Rose.

Okay, so maybe when my mom tells it I don’t sound like the savior incarnate but that’s what happens when you hock out your newborn to play Jesus in the Christmas nativity scene.

The dad story goes like this: There was once this guy who was in love with Emmy Lou Harris.  So in love in fact that given the chance, he would gladly trade in his very pregnant wife for a little whoo-hoo with Emmy.  Not that the father is a bad guy, he’s a great guy in fact, maybe the best guy ever but truth be told, he’s still a guy.  And at times his ‘little guy’ still rules over everything else.  And even though his wife was generally considered a ‘real catch’, he still might risk all that for a shot at Emmy Lou, if given the chance.  (Twenty years later, he actually finds himself in Emmy Lou’s dressing room.  Sure, she’s beautiful.  And sure, maybe if he tried hard enough he might just get that chance. But when it comes down to it, he’s older and tired and he’d just rather go home and get into bed with his wife.)  In any case, he wants to name the baby after Emmy Lou but the wife, understandably, isn’t too keen on the idea so they compromise.

So Emma Rose the “and so it shall be” baby and Emma Rose the chick-I’d leave-your-mother-for baby.  Either way, is it any wonder I’m always uncomfortable when people call me by name?

by e. miller
Oakland, CA

Wherefore it came to pass, when the time was come about after Hannah had conceived, that she bare a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord.

I Samuel 1:20

Before I was born, my mother suffered several miscarriages. I would have been the youngest child, not the eldest, had I been born if these fetuses survived. With a heavy heart, my parents sat down and implored God for his mercy and prayed for a son. A deaf son.

Before exploring avenues of indignity, consider this:
At a very young age, both my mother and father underwent a bout of serious childhood illnesses with onsets of fevers that destroyed their hearing. Until late in high school, my father was placed in an oral language school which taught that using gestures to communicate was wrong; he went to Gallaudet University after a short stint at the Texas School for the Deaf. My mother was the only deaf child in a small town in Upstate New York and had her first exposure to sign language after she graduated high school. They both endured their own tribulations towards comprehending and accommodating a world that viewed their condition as an aberration. Events conspired to bring them together at a deaf bible college in Kansas City, where they met and before long, married.

Reflecting on their respective lives growing up deaf, they knew they wanted a deaf son, to allow him an experience of the world denied themselves. They were determined to make a difference for the boy, to show him and their own parents there was a much more kinder approach to raising a child with deafness. That this particular disability wasn’t something to be wrestled into submission, but something to be compromised with, and from an unique perspective, used as a tool.

So they prayed for a deaf child and into a silence asked of the Lord, I was born unto Jerry and Leslie Sanders.

by Samuel Sanders
Olathe, KS

It’s sort of a dorky name but as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown into loving it.  Still I can’t deny it’s let me down over the years, over and over, without a pang of remorse, pretty much the way Bill Clinton let Hillary down.  The one that comes to mind is when we were on a flight to Vancouver and I was sitting on the aisle, pretty far up, though not in the first class, and it just seemed to me that I was getting a lot of foot traffic brushing by me.  People coming up from behind me, then turning heel when they were a few feet past me, and invariably I saw them looking at me curiously, and then a look of disdain or whatever would cross their faces.  They would peer right at me and then they’d turn away as if from some tragedy.  This happened three or four times, then I thought to myself I was being paranoid.  To test my theory I unbuckled my seat belt and made as if to stretch, then started sauntering towards the restrooms at the rear of the plane.  Was it my imagination or were whole rows recoiling from me?

In Vancouver it all sorted itself out.  A writer I knew was also on the plane, and told her girlfriend she had spotted Kevin Killian way up in the front.  The girlfriend thought she’d said, “Kevin Kline.” There were a whole group of drunk girls on the plane and our flight turned into a game of Telephone as they whispered my name in one ear and out the other.  “Kevin Kline!” By the time the rumor hit Row 26, some had heard the name as Calvin Klein”—all of which explained the mass disappointment when they came sidling up to my seat and instead found not a star, nor a great designer, but instead just a guy with a name that sounds like something else.  I guess I’d feel chagrined too, so I can’t really blame them.

In a way it’s sort of like, when I was in school, I had a boyfriend of sorts who told me I looked like Neil Young—exactly like Neil Young—and he’d say it with such force I had no choice but to accept it as a compliment, but now I wonder.

by Kevin Killian
San Francisco, CA

1. Storms are brewin’ in your eyes (Starship)
2. You’re the poet in my heart (Fleetwood Mac)
3. Won’t you smile a while for me (Hall & Oates)

***

“Hi. I’m Sarah.”
“Ooooh have you heard that song…”
The eyes close, the head drops, and the hand-mic comes out.

Innocent fun, right? I feel there is one thing people tend to forget about these songs:
Even though they contain some of the most dramatic lyrics of the 70s and 80s, they are pop songs, chart-toppers, if you will. In general, one of the reasons a pop song becomes a universal hit is due to the vague nature of its lyrics, i.e., everyone can find a sense of “application” within them. So, as a “Sarah” experiment, I have collaged three Sarah songs into a poem that I feel highlights the fact that these love songs could have been written about any woman with a two-syllable name.

Feel free to substitute any name you want in the “huh-huh” space.

Waiting for the sunlight
no time is a good time for…

If you feel like leaving
hold on
there’s a heartbeat
there’s fire and ice.

(And huh-huh) loved me like no one has ever loved me before…

Alone and watching in the night
I’ll never find another girl like you
all I ever wanted
within the wings of a storm.

(And huh-huh) hurt me like no one could ever hurt me more…

I’d go anywhere
it doesn’t matter what for.
Woman’s eyes
stay until tomorrow
in the sea of love
where everyone would love to drowned.

If you’re reading this and realizing that upon introducing yourself to a Sarah you too have dropped to bended knee and belted out “No time is a good time for goodbye,” then know this: I don’t blame you. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that we all agree with that line. But, I guess, that’s just my point.

by Sarah Suzor
Boulder, CO

Having a female name has never bothered me.
I cannot recall ever being teased,
although some folks I meet are confused,
thinking I couldn’t be Leslie
and wondering in what way
I presume to represent her.

Leslie as a male name wasn’t popular
even as long ago, 1945, as I was born.
Leslie, according to babynames.com,
peaked in 1902 at slightly less
than 2 percent of all names given
to boys born in the U.S.A. that year.

However, “there was a period before 1945
when more boys were given the name.” I ride
the tail of an echo! “From 1946 on,
increasingly more girls than boys
were named Leslie. In 1997, girls named
Leslie outnumbered boys by 18 times.”

I get lots of junk mail addressed
to Ms. Leslie Gottesman,
and my wife and I get commercial appeals
aimed at lesbian couples.

But I like the name Leslie. As a young man
I was known as Leslie.
I like Leslie better than I like Les—
though Les is okay and is how everyone
knows me, except bureaucrats.

Some things do bother me.
No matter what they guess my full name might be
(Lester? Laszlo?) almost everyone
who meets me riffs in some way on
the proposition “less is more.”
It seems to be irresistible, often
even apologized for, and then delivered!
I never know what to say to this icebreaker

My last name translates from German
as “man of God,” which I always, humbly,
annotate that no doubt one or more
rabbinic father-son franchises, dynasties even,
existed in every eastern European shtetl
such as my grandparents fled
to the U.S.A. from. But I think that more likely
flourished hard-core layabouts
supported and tended by wives and daughters
while they studied the Talmud, daydreamed,
and maybe drank. I’m sure
every shtetl had several of these,
stoners of their time and targets
of the sarcasm “god’s man.”

But my pettest peeve is my own
unsuppressable reaction
to the homonyms of Les and Leslie.
Whether it’s a meeting around a table
or an outdoor rally of thousands,
if the holder of the floor concludes
her remarks with “Lastly…”—I snap
to attention as though it’s me
who’s been directly addressed.

I have met another Les Gottesman,
Lester Gottesman, a doctor I saw
when I was taken ill in New York one time.
An affable, Irish-looking red-haired man,
he stared at pages in a folder on his desk
for a long time and shook his head.

“I’m not used to seeing my name
on that part of the chart,” he said.

by Les Gottesman
San Francisco, CA

Polly
Not short for anything
Just Polly

I’m looking at myself, staring right into my eyes, repeating my name over and over and over until I can’t stop giggling.  Maybe I am seven or eight.  I didn’t know any other Pollys.  They were either British actors or unhappy macaws from Costa Rica.  There.  They were either old birds or birds.

My paternal great grandmother was Pearl.  And as far as the Jewish faith goes, you name your kid after a beloved ancestor; if they are still living you cannot use the same name. I never met Pearl but her portrait at Gramma Harriet’s Beverly Hills apartment was lovely under stucco ceilings overlooking Beverly Blvd.  In an oval mahogany frame, milky white and graphite grey, her eyes looked back at mine.  Same eyes.  Polish, whatever that may mean.  A few times while watching the movies of Krystof Kieslowski, I noticed the same eyes in an actor who reminds me of my father, who reminds me of Roman Polanski.  Our last name was Sidkovedsky.  Oh, the Jewish “sky”, not “ski.”  Never liked skiing anyway.  That name was changed at Ellis Island.  The man in front of our ancestors was Hungarian.  Geller was shorter than Sidkovedsky.  I prefer the latter.  And still despise boats, Ellis Island, the harbor in New York.  Harriet told me that they had to stay at Ellis Island for one month when they arrived from Warsaw.  Like a prisoner, while everyone was checked for lice and anything contagious.  She remembered a teenage Jewish girl with long red hair whose head had to be shaved.  She jumped into the harbor.  Such a long trip.

Polly.  Makes me forget half of my Polish ancestry anyway. But growing up in Roma, it became Polli- you know, “chickens.”  Exactly.  Bird by bird.

by Polly Geller
Los Angeles, CA

In Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis’ character tells his French love interest: “I’m American, honey. Our names don’t mean shit.” I totally disagree. So does the writer; Butch is a boxer, which makes the line hilarious.

My first name is Lisa, middle name Jan. I prefer my initials and have since approximately 1996. No, I’m not transgendered. No, I don’t have anything against my parents. At this point, I’ve gone by L.J. for so long that some people don’t know what my full name is. Others resent me for not using it on a day-to-day basis.

My parents, like most Jews, named me after beloved deceased relatives. My dad wanted to name me Jan after his cousin; Jan died at the age of 11 because she “had a hole in her heart” and besides this sad fact, she was rarely mentioned again. My dad wanted her name and her spirit to be continued. Suspicious family members considered this bad luck, so Jan became my second name. Lisa is for my Hebrew name Leah, after my great-grandmother, a small, tough woman who was nicknamed “The General” by her son-in-law, and possibly (shanda!) of some Italian descent. Her daughter, my grandmother, called me Leah-lah. Leah means weary. It also means ruler or mistress in Assyrian. Leah was a matriach for the 12 tribes of Israel. She had “tender eyes” and cried a lot, probably because she was a prophet. Maybe she was simply weary from having seven of Jacob’s kids. All sons, no less! People have asked me why Jews don’t simply give their kids the actual Hebrew names instead of Americanizing them; assimilation, I guess. I was this close to being Lena, or Lori, Lissette.

So, why L.J., after all this? After I graduated from college, I made an autobiographical 16mm film that was screened at NYU, on Manhattan Cable, and in the living rooms of my family and friends. Somewhere during the creative process that began as a music video concept and ended with my submitting the piece to festivals, I changed my name. Or rather, I reverted. My dad has always called me Lisa Janny and referred to me as L.J. when I was a very small kid. I associate the nickname with buoyancy and positive memories. When I sent the film out, I used my nickname to represent the part of me that is unfettered and creative. L.J. pursued what she wanted to without worrying about the consequences. After I moved on to new projects and jobs and relationships, I wanted to hold on to that essence.

What’s interesting, though, are the challenges that using a nickname presents. There are many people who will always call me Lisa and think L.J. is ridiculous, weird, or masculine. One ex-boyfriend says “L.J.” sounds like a truck driver. Another friend says it’s too southern for a girl from Brooklyn. (Although on Avenue X it made a hell of a lot of sense.) Plus, I’m not going to call my doctor and make an appointment for L.J. Not to mention I certainly don’t want to be called L.J. in bed. But now, Lisa sounds harsh to me. Incomplete, even.

Plus, nicknames are cool, let’s face it. I’ve worked in offices where there are 5 Lisas, but only one L.J. And, as crass as it sounds, in the competitive, narcissistic society we live in, having a brand for yourself is important. Our names represent us first and foremost, before any of our qualities can be assessed.

What has emerged is a tiered system. Naturally, my mom calls me Lisa. I tolerate certain old friends calling me Lisa and I don’t blame them; that was how I referred to myself when we met. With new friends I am L.J. but I always tell them what the initials reference. At work I always use my initials, which often requires support from Human Resources. I like close friends and men with whom I am or want to be romantically involved to call me Lisa Jan. It feels special and endearing. And of course, to my dad, I’ll always be Lisa Janny. (Or Munchkin Lady, or in honor of my long-gone pacifier, Nippis Pippis Van Flippis.)

Using my nickname makes me feel good about myself and differentiates me. But maybe more than anything, L.J. keeps my full name, and the meanings behind it, intimate.

by L.J. Fogel
Los Angeles, CA