I am not my name

I have changed my name. When I advised a few friends of the impending change, their responses were twofold. Some thought it was a bad idea – an unnatural act, a subversion of who I am, a new-fangled Americanism, and advised against it. Others were more forgiving. “It is ok”, they said somewhat condescendingly, “to reinvent oneself”. I could almost hear their inner sigh. Both groups betrayed the same deeply held assumption that we are somehow our names.

But our name, the way it is these days fashioned, is either a result of accident (the name of the family in which we happen to be born) or – like our first name – of the decisions of others, a decision made without much reference to who we actually are. My parents named me something when I was only several days old; unlike the name of an Iroquois warrior who might have been named, say, Deerslayer – or Standwithfist – to commemorate some heroic event, my name had nothing to do with me, my traits, or my achievements. As a matter of fact, for my first name I was given a name which was not even the name of someone else – like my grandfather, say, or a famous hero – a person whom they might have wished me to emulate. Rather, my parents selected a name which was fashionable at the time. There were several boys by the same name in every class of every school which I attended later. In naming me thus, my parents have shown minimum interest in my identity.

Thus, my friends, in imagining that my name is somehow bound up with my identity are simply confused. Of course, this is a more general failing of the human mind: to mistake names for things. (This happens all the time, of course, for example when we talk at length about nonsense abstract concepts like “beauty; or when we imagine that there really is such a thing as a butterfly). (There isn’t such a thing as beauty; and there isn’t such a thing as a butterfly. Both words are merely metaphors for a certain way of thinking and perceiving the universe. They describe the contents of our minds, not objects in the universe).

Those of my friends who graciously did permit reinvention, were of course mistaken in thinking that I was thereby moving from identity A to identity B. But they were also mistaken in thinking that I was reinventing something. The process of growing up, of maturation, is a process of invention. Of course, it is also a process of discovery (in which we learn all those things which we can not alter about ourselves); but in the main, it is a process of invention. We say to ourselves: I shall henceforth be this kind of person; I shall from now on stop being that kind of person. This is not reinvention; this is, as it were, chipping away at the stone to reveal the statue inside, which thereby gradually emerges before our eyes. It is a matter of approaching asymptotically that which we will become in the end. That is, if we live long enough to see the work complete.

Actually, I don’t know whether this is what everyone does; or whether this is how anyone else thinks about it; but I know this is what I do and how I think about myself. And because I treat the task with a great deal of seriousness, I think I am getting results. With every passing day, I seem to myself to be more and more myself.

But the change of name was not part of the process. My name is entirely external to me. It is something in my passport; like the passport number; I am not RC5683492 anymore than I am my name. My friends, who call me all sorts of things – “dawg”, “dude”, “man” (when I am lucky, I might add), and who in fact call me anything but my name – know this.

I am not my name. I can’t imagine why anyone would think otherwise.