Made of thin air, full of desire

[sovay]

I wish I had not been given a nickname in elementary school by people who meant it to hurt.¹

gaudior had to listen to me talking about this the other day. It depended on a mispronunciation of my last name, which was one of the guaranteed sure-fire ways to upset me in childhood. I still don't like when it happens, nobody likes their name being mangled, but I no longer take it personally unless it is a visible act of malice, in which case I consider people who try this sort of stunt as adults hilarious. It's not like the pronunciation used by my father's family is in any way authentic to the original Welsh. But I lost my temper easily as a child. I think some of it may have been a form of social processing overload; certainly some of my other emotional reactions were not normative for my age group. I imagine the rest of it was the normal curve of learning not to fly off the handle when other people were whatever they were. Either way, it was apparently very funny for other children to watch. And I didn't like people messing around with my name. It didn't just feel mocking or belittling, it felt wrong. The concept of true names always made sense to me: the idea that to change the name is to change the thing itself. I noticed years ago that I don't share my Hebrew name widely, even though it would not be secret from anyone who ever saw my ketubah or heard me called to the bimah. I use the same name for all my social media, but I recognize it as a handle, not my actual name. I might turn my head if I heard it across a room; you could not enchant me with it. I do actually feel that my alternate male name would be mine if I wanted to use it, but its existence is strictly a feature of having been conceived at a point in history when there was no assumption of knowing a child's sex ahead of birth—my brother born four years later only ever had the one name, because my parents were told the genetics early on. My grandmother had a nickname for me which no one else has ever used. I answered to it; I understood it as affection. It was not derived from any of my names.

The easiest way to mispronounce my last name is to make it sound like a form of chewy candy or a pejorative term for the Welsh. Stick a first name on me that led naturally into that pronunciation and I blew a gasket. Otherwise I think I could have coped quite decently with being known as "Saltwater Taaffe."

1. Please note that this post is not a request for anyone to start using it seriously. I think about nicknames from time to time, because they interest me, and they were on my mind recently because of a character in Only Angels Have Wings (1939) whose proper name we never actually know, even though he's one of the film's quartet of main characters. So then I was thinking about the fact that the one nickname I attracted in elementary school was a deliberate effort to needle me and the one that really didn't stick in high school was similarly based around not letting me live something down and it would have been nice if it had worked out otherwise. I know there's a time-honored tradition of teasing tangled with affection, but I was not the right person for it. I console myself by thinking that I might have needed to be a character by Damon Runyon to make it work, anyway.

Comments

[the_rck]

I'm very worried that I will mangle my brother's girlfriend's name when I finally meet her. They've been together for at least a decade, and it's only been this year that he's been willing to have any of us meet her. I just have a feeling that, if I get her name wrong, it'll come across as me not wanting her around. My family is white, and she's black, and she's twenty years older than my brother (he's 39). Those are both things that could lead people to being nasty and unwelcoming, and I really, really don't want to be.

The spelling of the name isn't entirely intuitive to me in terms of knowing how it's pronounced, and I've only heard it once or twice. I worry that I'll settle on a pronunciation that's wrong and then not be able to get myself out of it (that happened with a girl in my daughter's class one year. I kept putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable of her name and then correcting myself.)

[yhlee]

Is there any reason why "Hi, I want to make sure I don't mispronounce your name, can you help me say it right?" won't work, especially if you haven't met before?

[davidgillon]

I suppose I'm fortunate that, given the amount of deliberate attempts to upset me at school, no one ever came up with a nickname that stuck. It wasn't until working life that that happened, and it was one that could very easily have gone the wrong way - Pod, shortened from Tripod, because I used crutches. I'm trying to think who came up with it, and it was either a friend who doesn't ever think beyond the instant, or a colleague whose personality was all sharp angles - it may well have been both. Fortunately I got used to it, because a significant subset of the people I know are still calling me Pod years after we all moved on from Evil Aerospace {/wry grimace}

I did, to my shame, once give a colleague an unpleasant nickname that stuck. He was being somewhat obnoxious, but it's not something I'm especially proud of.

[sovay]

Pod, shortened from Tripod, because I used crutches.

I have to say my first reaction to that is yikes.

Fortunately I got used to it, because a significant subset of the people I know are still calling me Pod years after we all moved on from Evil Aerospace

I realize this is not at all the point of your comment, but may I ask what field you're in? There's science and engineering in my family, although it isn't what I ended up doing professionally; if you worked in aerospace, I find that interesting.

I did, to my shame, once give a colleague an unpleasant nickname that stuck.

Agh. That sounds difficult. Do you still interact with him?

[yhlee]

I guess I was lucky that by the time someone came up with a truly ridiculous nickname for me, it was a friend of mine in high school and I just rolled my eyes at him.

(YoonHaBomber.)

[sovay]

(YoonHaBomber.)

That's amazing.

[tam_nonlinear]

There's a typo version of my first name that was used as a taunt when i was a kid. Sometimes, when I accidentally type it, I still frown at it before I delete it. Names are important.

[sovay]

Sometimes, when I accidentally type it, I still frown at it before I delete it.

That makes perfect sense to me.

Names are important.

Stories say so and they are right.

[davidgillon]

Yeah, almost inevitably people misspell my surname with two 'i's - a second one following the double-l. I know they don't mean anything by it, but....

[umadoshi]

I wanted to write a longer comment, but apparently I'm still raw on the subject of names and nicknames and the ways kids are cruel, and it's not coming.

[sovay]

I wanted to write a longer comment, but apparently I'm still raw on the subject of names and nicknames and the ways kids are cruel, and it's not coming.

It's all right. You never owe comments. Thank you for coming by.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I never had any nicknames at all -- not in the sense of a thing somebody would call me in place of my name; I consider endearments to be a separate category. My given name doesn't even lend itself to a diminutive form, and my family name is just 100% unmanageable. There were kids in school (as well as one P.E. coach) who mangled it as a form of mockery; that was pretty much indistinguishable from the normal state of affairs, and didn't bother me much.

I don't know whether the unusual nature of my legal moniker is the reason that names have always been a Thing for me in stories, to the point where I have to ration out my allotment of name tropiness (and then it sneaks into stories that weren't supposed to have any of that sort of thing anyway). Not just true names as a means of enchantment: names with obvious literal meaning (thank you, Elfquest); names with hidden symbolic meaning; characters changing their names because of major life events; characters having multiple names depending on who's speaking to them or where they are. If it's a name-related trope, I probably love it.

You could probably enchant me with "Marie Brennan." Sometimes things attach firmly enough that you can have more than one true name.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love all the name-things you mention. For me it reached as far back as my first reading of The Lord of the Rings, in fifth grade, and loving all of Strider/Aragorn/Estel/Elessar etc's names.

I feel this pain

[drwex]

My surname is quite unusual, easily mispronounced, and I've always been sensitive to the cloddish attempts to make it a humiliation.

[sovay]

My given name doesn't even lend itself to a diminutive form, and my family name is just 100% unmanageable.

I really like your legal name. I've never encountered anyone else with it, which makes it very easy to remember.

I don't know whether the unusual nature of my legal moniker is the reason that names have always been a Thing for me in stories, to the point where I have to ration out my allotment of name tropiness (and then it sneaks into stories that weren't supposed to have any of that sort of thing anyway).

Names matter for most of my characters, but I suspect they would even if I hadn't grown up with one that I've learned to spell out in NATO alphabet over the phone. (My high school yearbook misspelled it every year, including the year I graduated. My parents had even written a letter. I wasn't thrilled.) It's the sort of thing that is so deeply twined in most mythologies, I'd have encountered it no matter what. What I suspect my own name accounts for is a tendency to give my characters the sort of names that make fleurdelis28's eleven-year-old standing challenge to use the spam name "Cadfael Aronowitz" in one of my stories much less unreasonable than it might sound.

(There is an Aronowicz in "The Boatman's Cure," who I suspect is the same Aronowicz who married the demon in "When Can a Broken Glass Mend?" in which case her first name is Rokhl and she never uses it. It's no go with Cadfael so far.)

Sometimes things attach firmly enough that you can have more than one true name.

Agreed. For me, the one with the ritual application feels most at the core of me, and therefore the most dangerous, even if it's not the one I use most often or most intuitively, but I imagine this is not the way most people who have Hebrew names think of them.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I know there's a time-honored tradition of teasing tangled with affection, but I was not the right person for it.--I understand this.

"Saltwater Taaffe" is fun (or would be, from the right people)--you *are* a saltwater being--except that the mispronunciation of the surname just makes it frustrating. I hate mispronunciations! (I think because my first name, which I like, is often mispronounced.)

[sovay]

"Saltwater Taaffe" is fun (or would be, from the right people)--you *are* a saltwater being--except that the mispronunciation of the surname just makes it frustrating.

Right!

And then in between starting and finishing this comment, because of talking with rushthatspeaks, papersky wrote me a poem.

(I think because my first name, which I like, is often mispronounced.)

(I would not have expected that! I'm sorry.)

[ron_newman]

- The easiest way to mispronounce my last name is to make it sound like a form of chewy candy

which is exactly what I thought was the correct pronunciation of your name, when I first encountered it and had never heard you or anyone else say it aloud.

[sovay]

which is exactly what I thought was the correct pronunciation of your name, when I first encountered it and had never heard you or anyone else say it aloud.

It's the attempt I hear most often in this country¹ and I don't take it badly from people who are obviously hazarding a guess.

1. In Ireland, where there are a lot of Taaffes, the name was consistently pronounced Taff. I assumed our pronunciation sounded like a mistake to them. In Austria, where there was a fairly famous branch, the name has two syllables and sounds respectably Mitteleuropean. I know I've asked papersky about the Welsh, but at present cannot remember the answer.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

In the 8th grade (1968) several members of my obstreperous class were given derogatory nicknames by THE SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER (how inappropriate is that?), including one chatty friend whom she called Maggie Mae Motor-mouth. My friend cheerfully accepted it, and all of us called her Maggie from then through the end of high school. I saw her a couple of weeks ago, and when she called to confirm the time, she said "this is Mag." I don't know how the teacher came up with it - the Rod Stewart song Maggie May wasn't released until 1971.

[sovay]

given derogatory nicknames by THE SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER (how inappropriate is that?)

Um, VERY.

I don't know how the teacher came up with it - the Rod Stewart song Maggie May wasn't released until 1971.

There's a folksong called "Maggie Mae," but it's not an allusion I'd apply to an eighth-grader. I don't know of a precedent for adding "Motor-mouth."

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I've had so much resonance with post that I've been thinking about it all day. It pretty much ticks all the boxes for my personal "this is my name and these are the surrounding parameters" bingo.

x Childhood teasing around mangling and rhythmically repeating my last name making me absolutely furious. There's something about attacking a person's name that hurts like almost nothing else when we're kids. It's ironic really, because the implication was actually more about my gender than about my name. I'm kind-of interested in the fact that the other kids picked up on that when I was eight.
x Answering to a nickname from my grandfather and no one else, that had nothing to do with my given name.
x Using an online handle variously that isn't "me" but which I would probably answer to if it was said.
x Knowing the name my parents would have given me if I'd been genetically a boy and occasionally whipping my head around when that name is called.
x Having wanted a functional nickname, not just a shortening of my name because it was too difficult for summer camp counselors and etc.

Oddly, I think I have attached a lot more significance to middle names for various reasons, because my own name is just a single name and I have no secret Hebrew name. My name is just my name, Hebrew, English or French. Though I did have a French teacher who decided to give us all typical French names one year. I was Martine, which wasn't great, but at least everyone could pronounce and remember it.

Bingo!

[sovay]

My name is just my name, Hebrew, English or French.

I am reminded of my friend Shlomo, who on arriving at Brandeis was repeatedly asked what his Hebrew name was and responded dubiously, ". . . Shlomo?"

Bingo!

Hee.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

children are cruel creatures.

[sovay]

children are cruel creatures.

Adults are not so great sometimes either. Fortunately, they can both get better.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It's the name of a Welsh pirate from a comic children's book
With pyramids of oranges, a cannon and a hook,
A daffodil, a hammock, a canary, stick of rock,
A Davy-lamp to light the seas, a peg-leg in a sock...

Saltwater Taffy's voice confides, tells tales in lilting tones
Of sunken ships and treasure, black skull flags with crossing bones,
Boasting of all the conquests made upon the Spanish Main
And a childhood spent in Tiger Bay (you can't go home again).

Ah, fortunes found and fortunes lost upon the rolling sea
The mermaids booming conch-shell songs, to windward and to lee
The drifting weed, the shifting reef, the blown-glass floats, the sky
The lure of far horizons and the secrets seagulls cry.

The blue that always beckons, the setting of the sails,
And the welcome in the hillsides ever waiting back in Wales.

[sovay]

The blue that always beckons, the setting of the sails,
And the welcome in the hillsides ever waiting back in Wales.

Thank you.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I once had a teacher who nicknamed everyone, but they were perfectly kindly nicknames and most people didn't mind them (although apparently Stanley Ann Dunham, twenty years before me, wasn't wild about being called the Stanley Steamer). I was quite distressed when I talked to him many years later and he didn't use my nickname.

[sovay]

(although apparently Stanley Ann Dunham, twenty years before me, wasn't wild about being called the Stanley Steamer).

I think Stanley Ann Dunham is a wonderful name.

I was quite distressed when I talked to him many years later and he didn't use my nickname.

I can see that! My high school Latin teacher gave my brother the only nickname that (a) ever stuck (b) he liked.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

My first name does not really lend itself to nicknames, but my boss tends to abbreviate it in meeting notes and other purely internal communications by using just the first three letters. I'm not entirely thrilled with it, but since she doesn't ever address or refer to me that way when speaking, it's not worth making a fuss over.
Oddly, I don't really care much if people accidentally call me by a completely wrong first name. I'm a twin, so I'm kind of used to it. ;) And my last name is Polish, so mangling is routine. Although when I lived in Indiana, the proximity to Chicago and Detroit meant people usually did a better job with it.

[sovay]

My first name does not really lend itself to nicknames, but my boss tends to abbreviate it in meeting notes and other purely internal communications by using just the first three letters.

Fascinating. By which I mean, I don't understand what leaving off the last two letters saves in terms of pixels or time, since it takes just as long to read the abbreviation as the real thing.

I'm a twin, so I'm kind of used to it.

I keep forgetting that! Do you have similar names, or just visual similarity?

Although when I lived in Indiana, the proximity to Chicago and Detroit meant people usually did a better job with it.

That's pretty cool.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I've had two nicknames that stuck around for a few years, but neither come from my birth names. I was called "Jethro" at college. It got shortened to "Jeff", which people thought was my first name. Then I became "Gelfling" (being long-haired, willowy and pointy-faced,it was bound to happen at some point) which at least one old friend still uses. Being called "Gelf" all the time led to many explanations that it didn't in fact come from Red Dwarf!

[sovay]

I was called "Jethro" at college.

Where did that come from?

It got shortened to "Jeff", which people thought was my first name.

That's beautifully confusing.

Being called "Gelf" all the time led to many explanations that it didn't in fact come from Red Dwarf!

I like your ability to attract nicknames that bewilder.