Names

At the radio station two of the three people that I've shadowed suggested that I get a DJ name. Their motivations for this are clear: that as women, it might not be a good idea to put one's identity out there as faceless creepers sometimes gather. I witnessed this first hand in the studio, as a man called one of these DJs three times in the two hours of their show. The other DJ who I was shadowing late at night simply did not ever answer the phone. The third DJ, a man, was the only one of the three who used their own name, though I can't recall if he ever used his last name. I can't actually recall him ever referring to himself but this information is out there on the station's website, the name of a person's show and the name of the person. 

I was thinking about DJ names and what mine could be, that it might be easier to use an alias, DJ Food Lion or DJ Visiting Scholar or whatever. But whatever names I could think or or were suggested by friends were not names that I felt attached to. The crux of the matter is that my first name, Tyler, has never really felt like the right name. My middle and last name feel "right," but I've always had an ambivalence about my first name. I don't know what this feeling is exactly, or where it comes from, but introducing myself by my first name always generates a twinge of anxiety. Picturing myself saying it produces a twinge of anxiety. Seeing my name in print also conjures a twinge, though it's a twinge of disassociation more than anxiety. 

This twinge has been around for some time. I've said to a number of folks at points during the last fifteen or so years that I didn't really like my name or feel like it was my name. Certainly, I've never had the guts to claim a new name, to commit to a public declaration that that I didn't like my name. To do so would gum up the works of my relationships, public and private, and generate conversations that I don't want to have. I imagine though that after a period of questioning, my old name would fade away and whatever the new name was would take it's place. The problem, however, is that I've never found a new name that I liked, or a name that resonated with me loud enough to go through the efforts of changing my old name. 

More than that though, I wonder if I would develop the same kind of negative sentiment towards my new name. I brought this up with my therapist the other day, unsure what to make of this feeling of "name dysphoria" but taking it as a potential inroad to another, possibly insightful conversation. Predictably it lead to a conversation of past associations with the act of saying my name. A common experience when I was younger is that I would need to say my name twice because a person would not be able to hear my name clearly the first time and even if they did, that it would quickly be forgotten. I don't know how many times a person would guess that my name was Travis or worse, Trevor (a name that I associate with paragons of whiteness and privilege), and then I needed to correct them. 

There are two possibilities here: the first is that my feeling towards my name and saying my name is carried over from past experiences. Past experiences that are one part my perceptions of others and one part others perceptions of me. Psychology, and that experiences are embodied and reiterated into sensation each time encountered and like all creatures, I habitue myself to optimize encounters with my preferred feelings. This is the most likely explanation. Another possibility is that my name is in fact the wrong name. That I am actually not Tyler but someone else. This explanation presumes the existence of a second world, one where my true name resides, waiting for me to discover it. This part of me is not entirely rational but it makes valuable connections nonetheless. While I do occasionally take comfort in mysticism I have a hard time defending it. Meaning, I could not seriously argue that the sublime or nature or God or the gods know my true name. Names are not genetic or biological, but functional and ceremonial, I tell myself. They matter but not to the thing itself. 

In China people often think my name is Taylor but whatever, I can forgive them for this since it's China and being in China as a foreigner affords the freedom of not being someone else. Taylor, as in Taylor Swift, a known entity. I think of some of my Chinese students who seem quite malleable on the topic of their names, that it doesn't matter to them if I call them by their Chinese names or English names.  Whatever you prefer to call me, they say to me on the first day of class. "I'd prefer to call you by your real name." The assumption I often encounter while working with Chinese students is that it's easier for me, the foreigner, to remember and pronounce English names. I guess this is true, especially in the short term, but it also seems to me an open acknowledgement that the teacher/student relationship is a performance. My desire for authentic exchange with students, whatever that means, is hindered by this acknowledgement. 

My name, it seems, should be an authentic expression of who I am. This is the dream: one day I will open the flood gate that keeps my true self from emerging. That I will discover the key memory in therapy or that I will meditate away the pin that holds my defenses together. Or I will meet the right person and suddenly the way will open up. All of these things are possible but until then I will do my best to mitigate my cynicism. Taylor, Tyler, Trevor. I'd prefer to call you by your real name if you know it. If not, that's ok. I don't know mine either.