What's In a Name?
By Heather Reid
ommy, were you always ‘Mommy’ or did you have another name?”
My son sat in the morning sun on the mudroom bench in the kitchen eating dry cereal with his fingers and posed that question.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Do you mean another name like ‘Heather’? That’s my name, too."
He mulled this over, chewing Cheerios thoughtfully.
“Yes, but do you have OTHER names?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that one.
When I was a child, I decided that I really liked my middle name – Lynn – and so I used it regularly. Years later, I got married and my husband at the time was insistent that I take his name. So I acquiesced.
I used my maiden name as my middle name, and my husband’s last name as my own, but then my middle name disappeared. I remember seeing my ‘new’ name on some official document and I found it disorienting and unfamiliar.
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