“Why did you call me Helen?” It is a question I have asked my parents probably thousands of times and they have a deliciously pretentious explanation for my name, and as I’ve grown I have proudly started to perpetuate it. Helen, a Greek name meaning light, (as well as being the face that launched a thousand ships), was chosen for the fact that I was born two months prematurely weighing two pounds two ounces, light by anyone’s definition. It suits me, as one of those no-nonsense, pragmatic names that can carry you through any stage of your life. My mother tells me of their determination to find a name that wouldn’t go out of fashion by the time I was eighty three. Having grown up amongst a generation of Kylies, Staceys and Billy-Jos, I understand the logic behind it. I like having a name that instantly belies my gender, but not my age.

I will be honest and admit, with no offense to my parents, that when I was younger I wanted to be a Becky or a Holly or a Vicky, anything with a y really. There was a girliness to those names, a softness that as an eight year old drowning in my own precociousness, I wished I had. There were no shortened forms of my name, no jolly nicknames. I was a constant, and, at the time, it was maybe too mature a name for my nature. It needed nurturing.

As for my middle name, never has it seemed more fitting. Louise means warrior, and from the second I was born it feels as if I have had to fight. As a child, I was a regular at accident and emergency, riddled with severe asthma attacks and often arriving on the verge of turning blue. A year and a half ago, I shattered a disc in my lower spine, and currently, spending a day out of the house has turned into a battle. There was no small amount of prophecy on my parents’ part.

The adult me loves my name, and revels in its practicality. I may never win any prizes for glamour but, like my real life self, my name offers a steeliness and a strength of character that I have worked hard to develop. There is tough love in the name Helen.

The real beauty of my name, as with the scientific beauty of faces, lies in its symmetry. Helen Dring lies on the page beautifully, a perfect ten letters.

by Helen Dring
Liverpool, United Kingdom

I used to say I didn’t write because of my name: Michelle Hoppe.

Michelle Hoppe is a Los Angeles writer/actress. I’m an unemployed Florida English teacher/writer. She played the guidance counselor in a reversed Shakespearean comedy Ten Things I Hate about You. I played nun #45 in a school production of The Sound of Music. She is a pornographic novelist. I am a Mormon. Her website has a single red rose draped seductively across the opening of a blurry-paged novella and fine white print on a black screen irrelevantly warning away minors. I masked pride and fear, for pride is fear, behind the question, How could I ever make it away from that name?

But I now proclaim–irrelevantly, as I assume someone is reading this–that I do write, and there came a time when I had to submit my first cover letter. I’ve heard cover letters are legendarily archived when ridiculous. Phrases like, “My mother really loved this story, and she thinks you will too,” or “My writing group expressed extreme like, even love, for my work. I’ve sent you this same story three times. Please take me seriously” are kept for editor posterity. Cover letters are the art of selling oneself, the paper equivalent of an interview, so I don’t know what I was thinking when I submitted,

Dear Editor,

Bio: Someday I’d like to be published as M. R. H., as opposed to Michelle Renee Hoppe or Michelle Hoppe. M. R. Hoppe sounds a little too sci-fi or fantasy for what I’ve written. Michelle Hoppe is the name of the actress who played a dirty guidance counselor in Ten Things I Hate about You. She’s a dirty novelist in real life who publishes under my name (name strumpet!). Maybe someday I’ll get married and all my problems will be fixed. I’m asking these questions now because I have yet to be published. You could change that, wink wink. Now I feel like a strumpet.

Thank you for your consideration,

M.R.H.

The next day: panic. Aside from felonies and misdemeanors, there was absolutely nothing to be done. Two months later I received a reply.

Dear Michelle,

Thanks for submitting your work to . . .  Unfortunately, I can’t use it for our next issue.  I would, however, love to see more work in the future.

Thanks again,

Poetry Editor

P.S.  I was honestly much more drawn to the style and tone of your bio. Do you have any poems that are looser, like that?

By M.R.H.
Satellite Beach, FL