The Name Therapist by Duana Taha

Author:Duana Taha [Taha, Duana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-81532-3
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2016-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

New Year, New Name?

So why didn’t I just not be Duana? Given that my name felt like a burden, I had realized around ten that maybe a nickname was the answer. Perhaps what I needed was a respite from having to define who and what a “Duana” was, and usually finding that the reality was far away from who I would have liked her to be.

So I decided to change my name. Instead of waiting for a brand-new environment to do so, I had announced to a classroom full of people I’d known for years that I would like to be called Dawn.

Dawn? I wish I were kidding. Dawn?

I know that we are supposed to be kind to our former child selves and that back-then Duana didn’t see exactly why this was a losing proposition. But I know what I was trying to do. I was trying to mimic the kids who were called Maggie for Margaret, or Billy for William, and I couldn’t find anything that went with Duana. I was trying, I realize, to mimic the immigrant method of choosing an anglicized name that somehow resembles their given name, in the way that Jaswan becomes John. But though Dawn had a tenuous connection to Duana, it was kind of airy and silly. (And it was patently obvious that I had just lifted it from The Baby-Sitters Club, which is an advertisement for onomatopoeia in names if I’ve ever heard one. “Dawn” was the hippie, California-transplant character who ultimately couldn’t hack it on the East Coast. “Claudia” was the exotic artsy one. “Mary Anne” was good and wore braids, because you couldn’t just name her character “meek and boring.”)

Not surprisingly, my classmates, who had known me for years, did not accept “Dawn.” I’d violated the first rule of having a nickname. You don’t give it to yourself. My insistence on the “new” name faded after a few days, but the teasing lasted for weeks.

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