Events and discussions of this weekend have spurred a lot of thought and talk about pen names and the uses thereof- mainly how one would handle introducing oneself at a convention or event. I know CE Murphy and Sherrilyn Kenyon are transparent
now about their alternate identities but I wonder if there was a time when they weren't? Did Kate Dermody and Kinley MacGregor do their own events? I know Victor Milan signs both his names in his books- with the by-line first and then his own name beneath.
When I was signing with my fellow authors in my brief stint as a romance writer, they were all shocked to find I was writing under my real name. And I sat at a table with them for hours and when I left, I realized that one woman (a lawyer) had given me her business card but I never found out the other woman's actual name. And to this day I still don't know.
At Dragon*Con, one of my boothmates was upset because D*C had put her real name on the badge and she had to go back to get it changed to her professional name. As a school teacher, she was not comfortable with her convention persona getting back to the parents of the children she taught and being misunderstood.
She and I talked a lot about names and personas and it was an interesting chat.
We ascribe a lot to names: meanings, numerology, cultural background, emotional baggage. There are names I won't use in my fiction because I knew someone who had that name and didn't like him or her, or I know someone currently with that name and don't want to draw a connection.
reannon used my name for the main character in
The Cold Ones. But that Sara Harvey is nothing like me- except that she may have brown hair...but that's about it. It was an homage, not a character study of the original specimen. Yet, I am attached to that character because she
has my name.
Names are a strangely powerful thing. They resonate. We get attached to them. They have power.
There are so many stories and legends about guarding one's True Name, whatever that is. How would one find out one's True Name? Is it something given or something acquired? And if the latter, what do you do with the old one? And how do you use the True one?
I have an acquaintance I knew for about a year. Not long ago, I saw her at a party as it turns out she is friends with a group of my friends separate from the social circle in which I had first met her. Friendgroup A and Friendgroup B called her by two COMPLETELY different names! Evidently one is her first and one is her middle and there were periods of time where she had used both as her name, so which one someone called her depended on when they met. I was never able to pin down which she preferred me to call her because she knew so few people who belonged to both Friendgroups.
But I have found it really unsettling to find out- usually through some random third-party method- that the name by which I knew someone, for whatever reason, is inaccurate.
It makes me re-evaluate how well I really know that person and people around me in general, or at least re-evaluate what I know
about them. And if it matters.
A recent NPR story talked about renaming fish because "Orange Roughy" is so much tastier sounding that "Slimehead Fish."
And "Marilyn Monroe" sounds so much more glamorous than "Norma Jeane Baker" (or Mortenson, for the purists).
So, does it matter? Should I feel slighted that my menu doesn't mention "slimehead" or upset that "Marilyn Monroe" is emblazoned on her tomb even though she never legally assumed that name. In Marilyn's case, that was who she wanted to be, not Norma Jeane. (Of course, it was the weight of being Marilyn that eventually killed her.)
These are the things I ponder.
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
~Romeo and Juliet, II, ii, 38-49