What's in a name, Romeo? More than you thought, maybe...

I've noticed  a trend in my writing: I think I might be slightly obsessed with names.

For instance, my princess story has a main character who loses her name--and has to find another; my witch story centers around a girl who's stuck with probably the worst name on earth; and my current work-in-progress has a main character who's a slave boy with no real name at all.

One of the things my princess, slave boy, and witch each discover, I think, is that a name is often not some floating thing you toss or take up like a bit of seaweed, even if you manage to change it (which I'd do in a heartbeat if my last name were Bloodvessel, for instance, like a particularly-nasty character in one of Joan Aiken's books); it's often attached to something else--to family and origin, history and genetic traits, even culture, place, and heritage; it defines, at least a little bit, our sense of who we are.

Unfortunately, in Romeo's case. And Juliet's.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Romeo tries to convince Juliet (just hours after being hopelessly in love with another girl, but we'll leave that alone). Somehow everyone ends up dead in that story. Maybe because the main characters decided to pretend names didn't matter. They did matter--a lot, actually.

Your name isn't you. We hope. But it has some effect on you. And who are you, really, aside from your name? Do you know? Do I? I wonder.

I'm going to psychoanalyze myself here. Which should be interesting, since I've no actual psychology background.

I think I'm obsessed with names because mine is weird. It was, and continues to be, a little bit of an issue for me.

Here's a story: I grew up in a mid-sized town settled mostly by Scandanavian and English immigrants (top five most common surnames in my city: Anderson, Jensen, Christensen, Larsen, and Smith). Girls in my elementary school were named Sara, Amy, Mary or Becky.

Nobody was named Elena.

Nobody knew what to do with that.
They couldn't say it or spell it.
It was just weird.

Even I wasn't quite sure how I should pronounce it. The crossing guard said it the Spanish way (he sang Marie-Elena to me every day); my dad was a Russian professor and said it the Russian way, with a nice, fat Russian accent--more like Eliena than the Spanish "Alaina" version, and the rest of my family called me a Finnish nickname (my dad spent three years in Finland). Well, I figured I was just a weird, multi-cultural conglomeration of something. I always thought of myself as different from everybody else. And I always was. I was nerd-girl. Even my last name (Jarvis) was kind of a prissy-sounding English name (sorry, Jarvii). It evoked butlers somehow, or happy little wizards on cereal boxes. It got me teased, too.

So then I married one of maybe 8 Jubes in the entire U.S. I don't even hope for correct pronunciation of my names at this point, though people are getting better at the Spanish version of Elena these days. I answer to anything that sounds like an attempt: Elna, Alona, Alana, Alaina, Ee-lain-a, Elenna, Ellen-a, Jubb, Juke, Jule, Judd, Joobee, Hoobay, Jhoubay, whatever, and it's all ok. It's one piece of who I feel I am, however you say it.

Each time someone creatively pronounces me, I think, hmm, what if my last name really were said the French way and I were actually French? Or French-Canadian? What if my first name was pronounced the Manx way and I grew up on the Isle of Mann instead of in the Wasatch Mountains ? What then?

So, I write about names. Because I think it's fascinating how a name can define you--or not. I hope I'm more than just a weird name. And I wonder what I'd be like if I'd grown up named something else entirely.

Maybe I'd be exactly the same. I kind of like to think so.

Honestly, I doubt it.

And I wonder what would happen if a person suddenly discovered they weren't the person they thought they were all along.

What if Romeo discovered he wasn't a Montague after meeting Juliet? What if he were the illegitimate son of Juliet's nurse? Or Paris's long-lost brother? What then?

An entirely different story, at least...