What’s In a Name?

From time to time, I look back at writings I did in Keith Eisner’s writing class, or other writing knick-knacks and think, “this could be worth a quick blog entry” for a bit of fun or self-revelation. Below is such a writing from three years ago:

I have a dusty, pock-cratered, now flimsy box which my parents – probably my mother – used to put together birth announcements, congratulations, and pictures of my birth, some 67 years ago.  In the box is a blue knitted banner with the name “Danny” on it.

I went by the name Danny for about 13 years.  My parents called me Danny. My sisters called me Danny.  Other relatives and friends called me Danny.  I called me Danny.

As the teen years came upon me, Danny was jettisoned. I would be Dan from now on – I thought.  It was an adjustment for others.  Some called me Dan, others  – mostly older folks – kept on with the Danny identifier.

But Dan, somehow, never felt quite right.  I would introduce myself to others. Meeting me for the first time, people would call me Don. Or Tom.  Or virtually any mono-syllabic name that came first to their mind.  

When I hit 21 years of age, and went to The Evergreen State College for the first time, I decided that my real identity would be as Daniel. It felt right. And… was almost never mispronounced.

There was a downside, however, to this new, embraced identity.  When I would introduce myself to others as Daniel, and they returned the name “Dan” I felt disrespected. I was judgmental and dismissive of them for doing so, thinking “why are they arrogant to think that the name Dan was somehow more intimate than Daniel and that they somehow deserved or earned that right to intimacy. Instead, it marked for me the opposite.

I want to be a tolerant person.  Thinking the best of other’s intentions. But on this matter, I’m apparently inflexible. Whomever calls me Dan now, has just lost three pegs on my scale of respect… and it just drives me nuts. 

What’s in a name? More than there should be for me… but alas, when it comes to calling me what I wish to be called… that seems to be that.