A Bridgette By Any Other Name ...

A Brid­gette By Any Other Name.…

by Natalie Lance

On my morn­ing drive to work one day, I caught the tail end of a radio show where a woman called in response to a clip about the impor­tance of stereo­types asso­ci­ated with cer­tain names. Her name was Brenda. She had changed it from Brid­gette because she felt that the name had been bring­ing her down. Bren­das were more suc­cess­ful, she had deter­mined. The begin­ning steps were in her mind — dress­ing like a Brenda, play­ing her like a char­ac­ter. More than the legal aspect, these were the changes that really made the dif­fer­ence for her. She swore to choos­ing your own name as an empow­er­ing way to take con­trol of your own life.

Yeah.

Well, it got me thinking…we cre­ate roles for our­selves based on lots of things. I never really liked my name, but I don’t think it has ruined my life. I do think we play dif­fer­ent roles at dif­fer­ent times in our lives. As a kid I loved the name Deb­bie, and as I got older I liked the name Michelle. Delv­ing into “why” I would guess that I knew peo­ple with those names who pos­sessed var­i­ous qual­i­ties that I admired. In writ­ing, I try to chose names that are fit­ting of my char­ac­ters, and I some­times assign names to strangers I see in pub­lic. These are almost cer­tainly sub­con­sciously based on com­mon­al­i­ties with peo­ple I’ve known in the past. In all hon­esty, stereo­types of a name would be more lin­ear to the par­ents hopes and dreams for that child based on the gen­eral social stigma of the era in which they were born, and even so that logic is ter­ri­bly ham­pered by the immea­sur­able fac­tor of per­sonal perception.

Come to think of it, I knew a Brid­gette! She was a blond-haired, blue-eyed cheer­leader type, always smil­ing, who per­son­i­fied what every dorky, mis­fit, pre­teen girl hopes to become. Obvi­ously not the asso­ci­a­tion drawn by our radio caller…but then maybe she had just out­grown the name. Can I change my name every few years as my inter­ests and goals evolve? I don’t want to be a Deb­bie any­more, but I still wouldn’t mind being Michelle. Does your name have any­thing to do with “who” you are? I won­der if Michelle would be any thin­ner … or hap­pier. What if I’m not liv­ing up to who I’m sup­posed to be just because my mother liked the sound of three syl­la­ble first names and hated the Beatles?

My God, I have no idea who I am!

That same day, a vis­i­tor stopped into work. Sil­ver streaked hair in a manageable-but-attractive cut, trim fig­ure and clas­sic cloth­ing. I over­heard her talk­ing to some­one in the hall about work­ing in her gar­den more now that she’d retired from teach­ing. She spoke with sen­si­ble philo­soph­i­cal views and a pos­i­tive atti­tude about her accom­plish­ments in life. I found myself think­ing that this was the sort of older lady I’d like to be. I won­dered what her name was. Prob­a­bly some­thing like Mildred.

Gee. I don’t think I’m ready to be a Mildred.

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Jan 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.