To me, the name you are given when you are born is the starting-point of your identity, even before discovering what gender you are, which parts of your body work more or less effectively than others, let alone which land you inhabit, what religion you are going to be brought up in, what social and political position your family have accepted, and while working out "who am I?" and "how do I live as this person that I did not ask to be but am learning to become as best I can", is the key to adult life, the name remains the prime identifier, on your birth certificate even if you choose to change it later.
I am one of that smallish number of human beings who have two completely different names, both official: David Tzvi Meir ben Ya'akov in Hebrew, David Harry Max Prashker in English. The first David should be pronounced Dovid, and was my paternal grandpa's name. Tzvi was maternal grandpa Harry's Hebrew name, and Meir was uncle Max Goldman, who spent fifteen years trying to get as much of the paternal family out of Poland as he could before the Nazis ruined it. Ya'akov was my dad ("ben" means "son of"), John on his birth certificate, but always known as Jack. Prashker should be spelled Praszka, and is the village in Poland from which the family took its name when my ancestor Reb David became head of the Yeshiva there, back in the 1700s. So I am also unusual in being one of the smallish number of people who actually like their name, and, more importantly, am able to unpick the fragments of my identity simply by writing a paragraph like this one.
Working through these pages for this blog, I have been struck repeatedly by the number of people who just don't like the name they have been given, or who come upon an external need to alter it: a change of country, a marriage, the receipt of a title, a requirement of anonymity, a PR advantage. A blog like this one requires an Index, and I have broken it down once already, between those who are the main subject on a page, and those who are "merely mentioned". But I am writing about them because I want to know more about them, and so it is not sufficient just to place them alphabetically in an appendix. What paragraph would each of them write to unpick the fragments of their identity? Why were they given those names? Why didn't they like this or that part of it? Why did they make the changes that they did, or accept the ones that others made for them?
I am conscious that breaking this down into sub-categories may very well be interesting, even helpful in bettering our understanding of these individuals, but that it doesn't really work, because any number of them could be on more than one list, and probably there are other sub-categories that haven't yet occurred to me. Still, interesting and helpful make for a good starting-point!
The sub-categories I have chosen, sub-divided for ease into three pages are:
Pseudonyms 1:
1. Genuine Pseudonyms: noms de plume, de brosse, de camera, de highwire in one case, plus aliases, and even noms de guerre and de religion
2. Nicknames now assumed to be, or treated as, their actual name
3. Translations from foreign languages (mostly into English but I have included Latinisations and some others)
4. I prefer to use other (or fewer) parts of my name(s)
5. Does it have to be spelled that way?
6. Stick to the initials
7. Word-games and other oddities
Pseudonyms 3:
8. Self-aggrandisations
9. Hermaphronyms
10. I am content to be known just by my husband’s name
Simply click on any of those titles, above, to see who is listed
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