The Names I’ve Been Called
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I should have taken it as an omen that the moment I first set foot on this country, in the summer of 1998, my name got sweetly and swiftly butchered. I had never given my name much thought, as it came with the territory of my family’s heritage. See, my grandpa and I did some research one lazy summer and certified that for at least the last couple hundred years, pretty much everyone in my family was born in this one rural province in Spain. This gives me an uneasy feeling because, hello, inbreeding, but at the same time, we wear our colors proudly so it only made sense that I would end up with the name of the famous saint of the castle-walled city where my family lives.
But then I arrived in Maryland on a sticky July afternoon and my well-intentioned host parents asked me, “now, how do YOU pronounce your name?”. I was a born optimist so I told them, slowly, not holding back as I slightly rolled the ‘r’. They looked at me as if I had demanded of them the square root of a 26-figure number, immediately regretting their decision as they made a polite attempt in a low voice. I told them it was perfectly okay and not to worry — my Americanized name was part of my language-learning experience.
Life brought me back to the US for good, and I’ve mainly been called Tracy, Terri, and Trisha. For a time at Starbucks, I would try out simple names for the thrill of it, a latte for Mary, a cortado for Jane, a mocha for Ann. Many of my good friends eventually gave up and started calling me T, which is truly sweet because most of them don’t know that at a very young age (I’m talking kindergarten here) I had a massive crush on Mr. T and watched the A-Team with raptured dedication.
Then my kids came along and one day they found out that I lack a middle name. They were very little and highly impressionable, and were just bewildered that I’d made it so far like this. “We must give mama a middle name!” The favored choice was Salami, bless their precious hearts, go through all that trouble of bringing two creatures into this world and raise them with the round-the-clock devotion required of modern parents, for them to conclude that the most fitting choice for my nonexistent middle name was Salami. Luckily they were young enough that they forgot quickly, and it hasn’t been brought up since.
As years have passed and my roots here have grown, I am grateful to have a sprinkle of my heritage right there in my name, on my every ID, on every piece of paperwork I fill out. I no longer shrug it off when a customer service rep calls me Tracey or the barista scribbles Denise (seriously) on a paper cup. I speak up my name, speaking up for my ancestors, slightly inbred or not, but part of me nonetheless.
