So, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, but I wanted to wait until I could make an official announcement of it. Only, for any number of reasons, that’s not the point I’m at. So I wanted to tell you about this thing that I’m not announcing and maybe won’t ever announce.
It’s about my name. It’s about changing my name. It’s about what names mean and the weight they carry. And … well … more details after the break.
The story in brief.
As some of you may know, I have profound respect for my grandfather, Robert Blair. Watching him fight through life-threatening injuries and medical events has been one of the heaviest experiences of my young life. In recent months, as I’ve watched him approach the increasingly intimate prospect of death, I have been preoccupied with the question of how the rest of us—those of us who can do little but wait, trying to mend that which cannot be mended—how the rest of us can handle this.
We can’t. So we try to make meaning out of what we have left. One of the ways I’ve considered (intensely, for months now) honoring my grandfather is taking on his name. I considered doing so in commemoration of his passing, in honor of his life. But for someone who leads the sort of life I lead, a name gains value. Changing it is no simple matter: It changes my web reputation, contradicts the name on various publications, etc.
If I am to change my name, it is no small matter. If I change my name it would be wise to change it to the exact name I intend to go by. Which brings us to a questions of peculiar precision.
This web-connected world of ours.
I am “Rob D Young” because there are too many Robert Youngs and Rob Youngs out there; in this web-connected world of ours, this can mean “competition.” But explaining “Rob D Young” every time I introduce myself is a hindrance, and there’s something oddly pretentious about insisting on the middle initial anyway. But then, I do carry my pretensions fairly well.
I’ve considered Robert Blair, but to take the exact name my grandfather goes by feels, somehow, like a theft. Additionally, and relevantly for my goals, I can’t purchase the website RobertBlair.com. I’ve considered Rob D Blair, but here we encounter the same issues as “Rob D Young.” The double-B in “Rob Blair” just seems odd. And the one that really seems to have the most advantages is Robbie Blair.
I have already purchased the web domain. The name has a nice lyric quality and rhythm. It’s memorable. No need to specify the middle name. It captures a bit of playfulness, which is appropriate for my personality. And as I approach the possibility of actually changing my name—for whatever duration of time—I feel terrified.
What you answer to.
“It ain’t what they call you. It’s what you answer to.”
-W.C. Fields
Oddly, my mind gives no real complaint to the idea of changing my last name. Maybe just because last name’s aren’t used as often, maybe because I’ve always simply considered myself more Blair-ish than Young-ish. But the idea of being “Robbie Blair” raises a great deal of fear and doubt.
When I was six years old I decided that “Robbie” was a kid’s name and that I wanted to have a non-kid name. So I rather adamantly told everyone to call me Rob instead. Only my extended family missed the memo. Because the name is one I only hear from aunts, uncles, and cousins, it feels like a pet name. It feels like everyone is suddenly calling me “darling.”
In the last few weeks I’ve changed my profile name in several locations and introduced myself to a couple new groups as “Robbie,” largely to see how I myself react. What I’ve found is that I’m kind of surprised and sometimes bothered by people calling me Robbie, because it feels like they’re addressing me with an unearned intimacy. And simultaneous to being bothered by this, I kind of like the notion of … you know, letting everyone be my family.
What’s in a name?
Even beyond this discomfort (which would likely dissolve as I got used to the name), I find myself grappling with weighty difficulties on both ends of the spectrum. I told my grandfather about my plan to use the name (specifying all my own contradictions and indecisions in the process) a few weeks back. I told him I wanted to carry his name, and he told me he was honored.
Only I’m still really freaked out. I’m freaked out that maybe he didn’t mean it. And I realized, based on this neurotic skepticism, that some portion of my fear comes from a sense that I’m not worthy of the name. It’s my grandfather’s name: It means something to me, and I want to honor it. I want to do right by it. I want to be as brave and good and creative and dedicated as he is. I want people to be able to say of me, like so many say of him, “He changed my life.”
At the exact same time as I see such value in that name, though, I feel that letting go of what I’ve built into my own name would be a loss that extends well beyond search engine rankings. Seeing that name I chose in publications, in poems, in all these places where I’ve put the name to use, gives me a sense of pride.
I have not always been proud to be the person I am. But, today, I am proud. I have fought hard to build this life. I have worked so hard to become this man. There would have been so many times in my life when abandoning my name would be the signal of a fresh start, of wiping the slate clean. Only I no longer want tabula rasa. Whatever name I go by in the future, I will always have been Rob D Young. It will always be the name that carried me through these accomplishments of my early professional life—the name that carried me, in so many ways, into adulthood.
All the People I Have Been
The whimsy in the name Robbie Blair is appropriate to some elements of my personality. Randomly going around Ireland with an international group he threw together (semi-accidentally) on the road, doing performance poetry at parties in Glasgow, dancing with a nun, all the other little adventures of my life could comfortably belong to that name.
Only there’s so much more to who I am. I am playful but intensely serious, whimsical and fierce, spontaneous and fastidious. Some days I show up to school in my pajamas; on others I dress in button-up shirts and vests (and there’s no denying I’ve got a thing for ties). I can marathon Buffy or Doctor Who, I write essays about how John Donne was a jazz musician and how D&D makes us better writers. I compete with poetry about how etymology cracks open the world and shows us that we are all connected. I write Breaking Bad-My Little Pony cross-over fan-fiction, because it’s just way too easy picturing Pinkie Pie as a meth cook.
I am deeply analytical and wildly emotional, painfully empathetic and entirely brutal, and so many other contradictions that I don’t know how any name could ever possibly fit it all. And still, somehow, in making the choice of what name to show the world—what title to give this story I call my life—I find myself on the border of hysteria, feeling as if abandoning my name is the cognitive equivalent of taking a leisurely stroll off a scenic cliff.
I already carry my grandfather’s name, and to carry it more fully would be an honor. But giving up the name I have worked to build is no small matter to me. I wish I had answers here, but in the end I find myself strained, wishing I could know which burden to carry. Because carrying these histories is no small task: In this world there are few things as heavy as the weight of a name.
[image courtesy of Quinn Anya]
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