What's In A Name?

“How do you say it?” Asked 63% of the people I have interacted with to date.

In a desolate and rural town way outside of Chicago, on the first day of kindergarten, my teacher stopped class to mispronounce my name only a handful of times before giving up completely. All I wanted to do was crawl behind the cubby wall and never come out as the children stared at the kid with the weird name. Do parents understand the impact their choice of baby names will bring later in their child’s life, after all the snuggly, cozy, baby days are behind them, and the kid is released into the world to be judged first by their name? Probably not. Why, why, why had I been given this complicated name that nobody could ever get right? It would be many years before I would understand it all.

Three moves and two continents later, when I was in 6th grade, I discovered a piece of paper, off white in color and with tattered edges, that would bring about a chain-reaction of thoughts which would alter the way I would perceive life decades from then. Next to my father’s death certificate sat my birth certificate. My name, but an altered spelling, one that had been crossed off in a simple slash and housed a new one directly beneath it. Always fascinated with backstories, I asked my mother why my name had been changed from the “normal” way to its odd version.

They were already parents to a toddler boy, she said, and wanted their family “complete” with this second child and hoped for a girl. My father spoke about the baby in her womb and so very much wished for a girl. He knew what her name would be. The day came, the girl was born, and the name was given. But once the name was released from his lips to the nurse taking it down for public records, he was no longer sure if the way he had chosen to spell it would do justice to the name and could guarantee the proper pronunciation. After all, the name was Arabic and needed to be converted into English. He agonized over it for weeks, then did what he needed to. He wrote letters, made phone calls, and fought to have the name redone. And it was.

I know for a fact that the spelling he eventually chose definitely does not get me his desired results. But what I do know is that three decades after his death, the fact that he took that much time and energy stressing over and finally picking my heavily-voweled moniker fills my heart with love each and everyday. It makes me proud to know that a large part of him lives within me every time someone utters my name, gets it wrong, or comments on how beautifully unique the spelling is.

I had envisioned my father as a person who was perfect and never made mistakes since I had no real memory of him from his living days. As a result, I aimed for perfection, set my bar extremely high, then labeled myself as a failure when I could not achieve those unreachable expectations. There is no such thing as perfect, and my father, like everyone else, was not perfect, I know that now. Quite the contrary, he was human, and surely not immune to failed attempts. He tried his best and was mindful of his choices, and at the end, that is all that mattered. Because, without a doubt, his failed attempt became the best thing that ever happened to me.