“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

Have you ever been in the cereal aisle at your local grocery story debating between the bunches and the clusters or the pops and the puffs, only to hear your name called by a face of which you have no remembrance? Yes, it has happened to us all–except me of course. You see I have this name filter that allows me to know the nature of my relationship with anyone: ever-present or forgotten, dead or alive.

In the beginning, there was Justin. Though not my first name, family and loved ones have called me Justin since birth. Why this occurred yet remains a mystery. Coincidence or not, my mother and father also go by their middle names. For quite some time, this name served as my only identity, that was until Pre-Kindergarten.

Until the age of five I knew my name, but had never been called Joseph. When it happened, I did not quite know how to react. The only thing I did know was that I hated the epithet Joe. It was shortly after this point I realized my two names had separate meanings, separate responsibilities. Justin is well-known, well-loved: the first of a new generation. Joseph is well-learned, well-liked: one of twenty-something faces in a classroom. Despite my vehement distaste for Joe, by junior high Jo grew on me. The split began.

While Justin was the funnest cousin, the sweetest grandchild, and the most well-mannered church member. Jo was rambunctious, smart-lipped and, by high school, liable to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol. These characteristics, however, could never cross paths. If they did, my illusions would fail and I would have to find a way to amalgamate all that was Justin Joseph Jo into one person. This of course didn’t happen, for there was at least one more alias to add.

College years brought about the need for a personal renaissance. I had grown weary of Jo and his antics, Justin was too sheltered, and Joseph was still a child. Fret not, for Jodi was the answer to them all. It was he who spoke with power and conviction, he who dressed with the utmost sartorial excellence, he who fearlessly trotted the globe, he whose scholastic endeavors were met with honors, he who has fallen in love more than most, he whose spirit was far beyond his years–the one with the bulletproof smile.

As I have matured, it has been my challenge to make loveable Justin join badass Jo join baby Joseph join everyman Jodi. I have not arrived yet, but one thing is sure. Whenever I am approached by an unfamiliar face, I will always know how we are connected by what they call me.

by Joseph Justin Pye
Atlanta, GA

My name is Liz and my middle name is Bacon. Yes, Bacon. No, I’m not kidding. The first day of preschool I was so excited that I told my classmates my middle name. “Bacon and eggs! Bacon and eggs!” they sang. It would not be until I received my driver’s license at ago 16, would the fact of my middle name surface again. And only because showing off my driver’s license, a prized commodity, would reveal the name. I never asked my Mom why my middle name was Bacon. I just eventually came to know it. Bacon was my Mom’s maiden name. As I would come to explain, this was not a name my parents choose for me, but a name I inherited.

by Liz Bacon Jones
Oakland, CA