What's In a Name?

"From our ancestors come our names, but from our virtues our honors." ~ Proverb

The thoughts in this post wove themselves together, finally, tonight. I had been pondering the first part for a while, then found a second portion that pulled out more of my thoughts like threads through a loom, and then it all became interwoven in the presence of a small friend who is "precisely seven and three-quarters years old."

So let me begin.

***

Do you like your first name, your middle name, your family name? If you were as wise as your parents, would you have chosen the names you bear now? How does your name make you feel?

If you haven't figured it out already, my given name is Julie. Julie Michelle. The last part doesn't matter as much (and that part's for another day). For most of the time I've had this blog, I was very careful about not using my name, and on several occasions asked friendly, good meaning people to edit their comments if they had inadvertently used my first name. It was very important for me to remain anonymous and be tangobaby.

Part of that desire to remain anonymous was because I was often writing about my feelings about tango and people I danced with, and I did not want to put myself or any current or potential dance partners in an awkward position. It seemed more prudent to remain mysterious, and it was also more fun to think of myself as somewhat unattainable. Must be the Scorpio in me.

Another part of it was that I like the name tangobaby. I made it up on a whim, basically to get my gmail account, and it kind of stuck (with me, at first) and then it became my nom de plume and I quite liked having one of those. I liked tangobaby better than my real name in some ways, because it described who I felt I was and also because it was a name I made up myself.

From the time I can remember being conscious of it, I've felt somewhat indifferent to the name Julie. It's a fine name (from the French, a diminutive of Julia, and means downy or soft...ahhh) but it just never felt like it belonged to me. Perhaps because growing up I knew about three or four Julies (all more popular, more successful) so maybe I thought it was their name and not so much mine. I had little phases where I wanted to be called Julia or even Juliette. Those names seemed more classic, more fancy, dramatic, had more heft or meaning to them? I don't know. I was a kid.

When I was in my twenties, I went through a phase (I kid you not) where I seriously considered changing my name to Sabine or Rhiannon. My poor family. The truth was not that I really needed to change my name, but more that I needed to change my life. I was unhappy in a marriage that I didn't realize I didn't want, and in my unperceived desperation, I thought that having a new name would perk me up.

Getting a divorce took care of that, but I still remained Julie Michelle. Much more Julie Michelle than I had been before, probably, for most of my life until then. Until tangobaby came along.

***

Tonight I spent some time with one of my favorite friends. You remember my little friend C., my little girlfriend from the nail salon near my home. She is, and I quote, "precisely seven and three-quarters years old." She will turn eight on Halloween.

Somehow we got on the subject of names. She asked if I knew the meaning of her name, which I did not, and then she got a piece of paper to write some things down for me to take home, as is her way. (I also got some drawings of seed embryos, the reproductive parts of flowers--also known as stamen [it's the "men" in stamen that tells you it's the boy part) and pistil (which is not a stamen so it must be the girl part]--and a daisy because she is learning about plants in school.)

On the piece of paper she wrote her "American" name and then her Vietnamese name, and I said it several times so I would have the pronunciation down correctly, which pleased her. She was very proud to tell me that her name means "beautiful woman" in Latin. She was sweetly adamant that when I went home, I should look up the meaning of my name on babynames.com, which I did. Which is how I know tonight that Julie means downy or soft.

***

Hussein. What does that name mean to you?

What do you think it means? The following text I found on wiki.name.com.

"Hussein is an Arabic name that means 'good-looking.' It can be traced back to the Arabic hasuna, meaning 'to be good,' or 'to be beautiful.'

According to WhitePages.com, Hussein ranks at number 7,908 on the list of most common surnames in the United States. The highest concentration of people with the surname Hussein is to be found in Minnesota, followed by New York, California and Michigan. Other surnames with a similar ranking include Ginsberg, Lansing and Trump."

I wonder if you know where I am going with this.

***

Back in the early part of 2008, some people in the media took great pains to emphasize Barack Hussein Obama, and I know that I don't have to explain to you why. You're smart enough to realize that just because a person might have an unusual name, it doesn't mean that they are a terrorist or wishing harm on the people of the United States.

That's because if you're reading this blog, you're a person with some reasonable sense of the world and that's probably why you and I connect.

However, there are a lot of people who don't get it, and for that reason, the constant invokation of the name Hussein with the corresponding ominous intonation or pause makes the fluff-brained weak with fear. A presidential candidate who has the same name as Saddam! Let's take that mental leap together (in tiny minds, it isn't hard: Hussein = Muslim = Terrorist!). Say it ain't so!

I thought that idiocy had died down, but with the promised return to personal attacks by the McCain campaign (hey, they admitted it, I didn't make this up myself), it's now the second time in three days that this irrational guilt-by-free association bullshit has been used to introduce Sarah Palin and her running mate. Oh, did I get that mixed up? Sorry.

Why do I bother bringing this up? Why should it matter to us, those who see that this is just another juvenile stab at the Democratic candidate, that most people with half a brain would know this is so incredibly stupid as to not be given a second thought?

Because at a Republican rally this week, people in the crowd yelled out "terrorist!" and "kill him!". Do you think people are yelling that garbage at Obama rallies? And what do Sarah Palin and John McCain do? Nothing. And in doing nothing, they silently condone such behavior.

***

I've been told by one reader who won't be reading my blog anymore that my "hatred shines through my political entries."

Bullshit.

What I would say now is think of the little C.'s of our country. You might know a few yourself. Young, curious, bright-eyed, smart boys and girls of all different ethnic backgrounds who call America home. What if the name Caroline became the name du jour to shun, to say with hushed tones, the name of a killer? How many little Husseins are going to school now, worried that someone might beat him up because a schoolmate's parents said Hussein is a terrorist's name?

Because that is what happens. Kids can be cruel but grownups are obviously worse. And this is how ignorance grows and feeds itself on young minds and spreads like the fucking plague.

And so I come back to these kids. I don't want little Julies or little Carolines or little Husseins or little anyones to grow up in this country and be maligned or racially profiled by the people who would want to govern us. Attacked and singled out from people at the height of this nation's power. Because if they're doing it now, what makes you think they'd stop after November 4th?

And for the apologists who might come here and say this is all made up, that I'm blowing things out of proportion, I say to you, you're fucking wrong. And you know it. Call off your dogs.

***

ps. If you've never read my first post about little C, called Hope for the Future, I hope you will take a moment to do so. It's really one of my favorite posts ever.