What’s In a Name?
St. Mary Grade School. First Grade. Sr. Rosarita sends one of her students to Sr. Stella’s third grade class. Her mission: to procure a pair of scissors.
Sr. Stella, happy at the interruption, stops her class and asks the student her name.
“My real name is Patricia but my nick nack name is
Patty.” The class broke into laughter,
much to my chagrin. I had no idea what
they were laughing at. The nick nack had
come from the childhood song, This Old Man, “with a nick nack paddy whack give
the dog a bone.” Seemed right to me. My brother sat in the back of class trying to
hide from embarrassment. From that time
on I was PattyNickNack to the third grade class.
But what’s in a
name? A rose by any other name would smell
as sweet, Shakespeare tells us. I like
my name. I like that it is adaptable to
my various moods and life stages, unlike others who don’t want anyone messing
with their names.
“It’s one thing that is
mine and can’t be taken away from me,” an elderly woman I visited explained
when I dropped the Lou off her name, Abby Lou.
Life had taken so much from her over the years. She would have no shortened version.
We have a tendency to
like to give people names; it’s a way of showing affection or a bond. It can also show you belong to a certain
“in-group,” like knowing the password for a secret club. Children routinely give each other nicknames,
sometimes affectionately, other times with the meanness of childhood.
God has no qualms about
messing with our names. God routinely
changed names of those He had called.
Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon became
Peter, and Saul became Paul. A name
change often marked a life change or conversion.
As a child I was Patty. When I went to college I wanted to put
childish things behind so I changed my name to the serious, gender neutral,
sexually ambiguous, Pat. Practical Pat I was.
I ventured into places my female counterparts didn’t dare. I attended Vicariate meetings where I was the
sole woman amidst a room full of priests and deacons.
As
I got older I decided to reclaim my femininity with Patricia. Patricia--patrician, of noble birth and
bearing. I liked the sound of that. No-one would mistake Patricia for a male
based solely on the name. No more jokes
about the tele-evangelist Pat Robertson.
“You
look different on t.v.”
“Yes, the camera adds
ten pounds.”
And so my name has
changed as I have changed.
When I needed an email address and found that
probertson and every variation thereof had already been taken, rather than add
an abundance of numbers to distinguish myself from all of the other probertsons
in the world, I went back to my childhood nick name. Sure enough, I was the only pattynicnac on
yahoo. And so I’ve come full
circle. Perhaps there shall be more name
changes as I continue to grow and change, perhaps not.
This blog is meant to be about the odds and ends that are part of any life, the knick-knacks that decorate the edges of our life, giving it character and color. It will include random thoughts on life and on writing. I invite you to join me in this exploration, adding your own thoughts, the pieces that are fun as well as sad, as we pass through this journey called life.
So tell me, what's in your name?
