My mom and dad did something to me as an infant that stayed with me for the rest of my life. Now before you go thinking it was something truly awful, I’ll just tell you: they misspelled my middle name.
My middle name is Randell. When my fiancée at the time, Alyssa, was creating our wedding invitations, she knew how to say my middle name, but she wanted to confirm how to spell it. “It’s R-A-N-D-A-L-L, right?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “E-L-L on the end.”
“Are you sure?” Alyssa is a writer, she has a masters in journalism, and this puzzled her. “I’ve never heard of that spelling.”
She was so insistent that I began to have doubts myself, so we asked my mom. After confirming that the spelling of my middle name was indeed Randell, Mom went on to apologize, to say she was tired when the hospital staff asked her to write down my name, and well, she did the best she could at the time.
If you look it up, Randell is a legitimate variant of Randall, and Mom has back pedaled since her original explanation, saying the spelling was intentional, that she was being unique. But the jury of my own mind has heard the case, and they came back with this: my name is misspelled!
So that’s my dirty little secret: I’m an editor with a misspelled name.
But I’m okay with it, and I’ll tell you why. It is a constant reminder of our ability to live beyond certain names.
People name other people all the time, especially children. “You’re brave,” people say. Or “Dummy!” Or “Why’d you do that, goofball?”
The positive names get mixed in with the negative ones, and it can be difficult to know which names to own.
Sometimes for whatever reason we end up owning the negative names or even coming up with some of our own. We go from doing something bad to thinking we are bad. We go from failing to believing that we are failures. Negative names come to define us. Stupid. Whore. Selfish. Worthless.
The tragic thing about negative names is they have real power. They can and often do hold us back. They keep us from accomplishing things we otherwise were made to accomplish.
We all have negative names, but we can live beyond them. I like to remind myself that my mom did her best. The flaw in my middle name is also a symbol of my mother’s imperfect effort. Here is this woman who just gave birth. She’s exhausted. They come to her with a form, and she tries.
I need to try too.
It does take effort. It is difficult to do the essential work of sharing our shameful names with those around us. Continually living into our better names, the names that capture who we want and aspire to be, who we really are, is not a walk in the park. But this work is perhaps the only work worth doing.
It is the work of our own freedom.
What are you doing to live into your better names?
18 Responses
Wow. Just wow. This is powerful, Chad! I’m sharing this with my Rise Up Writers group next week. My name comes from my great-grandmother, Josephine, and my aunt Darlene. While I’ve grown up well acquainted with Dolly Parton’s song, I’ve always had to dissect it in my head. “Beauty beyond compare”, yes, I’ll take that. “Please don’t take my man,” forget it. Not my thing.
However, grandma Josephine was a strong believer. A faith warrior like me. She was also a poet and used to have her poems published. I prefer this connection to my name. 😉
Love it, Jolene. Keep living into that!
My husband’s sister was supposed to be named Sandra, but the people at the hospital misspelled it for the birth certificate and so it was Sandia. They decided to leave it and it fits her so well. Also? That means “watermelon” in Spanish and she married a Costa Rican man and lives there. So she is now Watermelon. 🙂
Ha ha! Love hearing about another name snafus. Thanks!
My parents – father actually – imposed on me a naming nightmare will all the best intentions – they named me Mavis Jeanette after my two grandmothers but called me Jenny from the day I was born – why? Because my father thought that Jeanette Mavis Curtis didn’t sound right because of the double “is” sounds.
At each of the eight different schools I went to it took half the term to get the teachers to call me Jenny – not Mavis and not Jennifer – and now at doctor’s surgeries, dental surgeries, medicare offices, hospitals, even at big impersonal educational institutions and anywhere remotely official that cannot, just cannot cope with someone called by their middle name – I get Mavis (which by the way, I’m not exactly enamoured with) and really don’t connect with. And the irony of course that for the last 24 years I bear a totally different last name.
While I have long ago forgiven my parents – who were acting as they thought best out of love for me – the consequences (maybe trivial but annoying nonetheless) keep on following me. One of these days I’m going to change the order of my names officially (and resist the temptation to drop the Mavis altogether.)
Great story Chad – especially the reminder that we don’t have to be restricted by the names others – or we ourselves – give us.
Anita’s comment makes me think of the Biblical change of names, Abram became Abraham, and the spelling of Sarah’s name was changed. There are a couple of names that I keep hidden, names I was called when younger, though they come to mind every once in awhile. But I am reminded of my Father’s unconditional love, and hope I’m growing to be more like Him.
You pose a wonderful question, Chad. So often we don’t explore the names God has for us, and thus we fail to recognize ourselves. He calls us ‘sheep’ (which I’ve heard are pretty dumb, easily frightened to death and prone to getting lost). He calls us his ‘children’. How often do we pose as know-it-all-grownups with answers to all of life’s questions? And if we’re children of the king, we are princes and princesses (how often do we fail to treat our own selves with respect?). He calls us ‘sinners’–we like to forget that one at surf the planks in other’s eyes. But above all, he calls us ‘beloved.’ No matter what we do or how we fail to live up to his expectations for us, he LOVES us. And that’s good news!
Anita, thanks. I love the tension you raise between the different names Scripture uses for us. I think of it as creative tension–tension that has the potential to bring things to life within us.
This is fabulous, Chad! Thank yo for sharing your dirty little secret. 🙂 When I was a child, kids teased me with the nickname Alison Wonderland (before someone made the name hip). I hated it, and as I result I hated Alice in Wonderland. As I’ve grown into a writer, I now appreciate the irony that an effort to bring me low actually linked me (if in name only) to a famous work of literature. As you said, we can live beyond our names, or grow into them. Or maybe both.
Lovely reflection. Yes. I want to live into the way my name embodies my mom’s attempt to try her best. And I want to live beyond the self-defeating names I have adopted, many times unwittingly, for myself. It’s both. Bless you.
While I would go to great lengths to protect someone else from receiving a name, I’m great at making them up for myself. In Revelation it says we will receive a new name only known to God and us. I love to think about that. I want to live up to whatever name God has given me.
When I was in high school, I attended an intensive week of service lead by college students at a university. At the end of the week, each college student we were paired with gave us a new name and anointed us with oil and a prayer. It was such a powerful experience. God has so much more for us than we can even comprehend.
The idea of living into our renewed names is powerful, Lisa! Thank you.
Fantastic article Chad! My name is BrandEn. The E was totally a mistake. Our conceptual mind is always telling stories, overgeneralizing and assigning names. It’s what it does. Only when we can start cultivating some mindfulness do we get to the observing self, the thing under all your thoughts, concepts, comparisons and judgements. The observing self… that guy… he knows what’s up. Buddhists like me would call it “true self” or “nothingness”. Christians know this unbiased, pure consciousness as “the soul” or I’ve even heard it compared to “the holy spirit”. Prayer, mediation and self reflection can uncover this mind. Less storytelling and name calling, more truth and creativity. Good stuff.
What a helpful distinction! And I love the thought that our tools in this endeavor are prayer, meditation, and self-reflection. If these aren’t counter-cultural practices I don’t know what are, but MAN! I need to make some space for them. Thanks for this very needed reminder.
My mom spelled my first name wrong on my birth certificate (on accident)! My birth record said, “Natacha.” That used to bother me as a kid – my mom wasn’t excited enough to meticulously spell the name she had picked?! Now that I’m a parent, I can offer a lot more grace on stuff like that. 🙂
The names I aspire to are the ones Jesus has called us to. The gap between who I actually am and who He wants me to be is my opportunity for spiritual growth.
Whoah, you got me beat there, Natasha!
Thanks for your comment at the end. I tend to think the most important stuff in our lives happens in that gap.
Great story, Chad. We love moms–tiny imperfections and all.
My middle name was supposed to be Cecilia after my maternal grandmother who passed away right before I was born. In fact, I’m certain that’s how my mother taught me to spell it. However, my birth certificate and social security card read Cecelia. I didn’t learn about this until, as an adult, I needed to get a copy of my birth certificate to get married. I was spelling my own name wrong all those years.
Thanks for sharing this. Isn’t it interesting how we end up re-examining our names when we get married? It’s such an identity-forming event.