This year, I’ve been grateful not to be named Karen. (Who wants to embody a meme about white cluelessness?) On the other hand, I’ve never been thrilled to be named Nancy, either.
When I was growing up, I didn’t mind it too much. I felt a kinship with the indomitable Nancy Drew, girl detective. And in my white, middle-class Oklahoma world, there were lots of Nancys around – just as there were a lot of Susies, Debbies, and Jeannies. Besides, I was named after my great-grandmother Nancy Jane, whom my mom had adored. (Nancy Jane went west at sixteen on a Conestoga wagon, married five times, allowed her hair to be washed only in rainwater, and for many years ran what my mother called a “rooming house.” Once I was an adult, my mother admitted that the place may have unofficially functioned as a brothel.) My dad had liked the name, too, since he had happy memories of having been stationed in Nancy, France, for a while during World War II.
When my brother and I mildly misbehaved, my mother would remind us that she could have given us names that would have been mortifying: Penelope Christine for me (not so bad, I thought) and Arbuthnot Ashcroft for my brother. (And okay, that really wouldn’t have worked in 1950s Oklahoma).
By high school, I was finding my name grating. I tried out various other names at my church’s summer camp. One summer, I tried to be called by my middle name, Lee. That sounded a little tougher, a little more dangerous. Another summer, I tried to become Jessica, which sounded more romantic. Neither one caught on. Besides, I really wanted my name to be something dramatic, perhaps more European–something with a cooler vibe. Like Francesca, for example. (I firmly decided that the short form would be not Fran but Cesca. Everyone would mispronounce it, but hey, I’d be able to correct them with a lift of the eyebrow.)
Then I went east for college. This was 1971, and suddenly I was surrounded by Ruths, Teresas, Joans, and Madeleines. The Deborah in my class went by Deborah, not by Debbie—so much more grown-up! Against that backdrop, Nancy sounded totally lame – so hopelessly middle-class and midwestern. (I was those things, of course. My yearning for another name thing nothing to do with reality. It was aspirational.) In the end, I didn’t change it. For one thing, an official name-change seemed like a lot of work. Worse, it seemed like a slap at my parents.
With all this ambivalence, I allowed my first husband (older, Jewish, coastal, professorial) to call me Nan. Once we divorced, I pulled Nancy out of storage and slipped it back on with a feeling of relief. I was done with trying to be something I wasn’t. My middle-class midwestern-ness wasn’t all of me, but I was no longer going to be ashamed of it, either.
Now that I’m thinking of self-publishing (with however much terror and embarrassment), I could protect my privacy with a pseudonym. If so, what should it be? For the light romance-fantasy hybrid that is The Magical Librarian of Tulsa, Oklahoma, I would need a name that suggests a frothy mix of libraries, dragons, and Las Vegas. (Nora Collette?) For the more somber, India-inflected eco-fantasy novel that is The Dreamers of Kardesh, a more serious tone would be appropriate. Perhaps even Indian. Maybe Nima Chandola? (Or is that cultural appropriation?) Somehow I imagine that I’ll wind up as Nancy.
These days, when I run into another Nancy (who is always roughly my age), we give each other a slightly sheepish thumbs-up. We’re relics of the post-WWII baby boom. Just as girls stopped being named Agnes and Ethel during the generation ahead of us, so Nancy has long vanished as a baby name. If it ever comes back, it’ll do so in fifty years or so, as some form of retro-chic.
But I’ve made my peace with it. It’s just a label, though one with a lot of personal history. For all its faults, I now regard my name with resigned affection.
And you, dear readers, how do you feel about your names?
I think certain names from our generation are due for a comeback: Nancy among them. I love it when people use family names and I think yours is a friendly name with a happy sound and I predict a resurgence!
You’re sweet. And you’re often right — as you are about the “friendly” aspect of my name. But not about the resurgence, I think….
I didn’t know any other Janet’s until recently. Now my next door neighbors are both named Janet!
I like my name, Mitchell. I go by Mitch except on legal documentation. My wife has gotten a look or two if we are somewhere and she says “Hey Mitch” when I’m up the aisle from her at the store. She will get a look from another woman in the aisle that is like “What did you just call me?”.
Oh, that’s very funny! We once had a plumber named Mr. Klutz. (Poor guy. He was a good plumber!)
Yeah, the names parents give to their kids! I was named for my mother’s favorite uncle, Dana, a real estate agent in OKC who drove a new Thunderbird (every year). He went by Sandy professionally, and Dana with the family. I didn’t really pay any attention to my name until junior high school (about the time I first met Nancy, at church summer camp). I knew that people often thought “Dana” was a girl’s name, and once in a while, I would get razzed about it, but nothing serious. The best part was at the start of 8th grade, someone in the office marked me as “Girl” based on my name, and I was assigned to Girl’s Gym class. Needless to say, the matron would not let me into the girl’s locker room, despite what the enrollment card said. Some of the guys I knew thought it was both funny and cool; I got a few status points that year in the terrible Darwinian social order of 8th grade. To this day, I still get mail addressed to Ms. once in a while. More than once, people I met in the course of work were surprised to find out Dana was a guy. But overall, my name never really bothered me and I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. It wasn’t boring or common (unlike my brothers, Mike, James and Frank). It was distinctive and didn’t lend itself to a stupid or insulting nickname, which in junior high, was to definitely to be avoided to maintain any kind of social status (as I was not a jock or a socially skilled good-old-boy, but the shy nerdish type, I would have been an easy target). So all in all, I guess I liked (and still like) my first name (and some girls thought it was cute or interesting, a definite bonus in dating).
I loved “the terrible Darwinian social order of 8th grade.” I think of that as the nadir of human existence, though in fact I had an okay time in 8th grade (which is when I got put in algebra with the other “accelerated” kids).
And hooray for us nerds!
Hi Nancy! My given name is actually Kathy Lee. I never liked the Lee part was actually grateful that my name was just Kathy and not Catherine, or something similar. The advantage is I always got to be the “Kathy” in the class while others had to stay with another version. And I never felt like it make me “less” grown up or anything really so never wanted to change it. My mom went for simple names for all of us girls, Ann, Judy and Lori. It was only Judy who has changed her name several times (for various reasons) but most recently insists on being call “Judith” as though that would make her somehow someone different! I actually like Nancy so I say stick with it! ~Kathy
Your name suits you! How lucky that you like it! Yes, my brother goes back and forth between his formal name and nickname every few years, depending on how he’s thinking about himself…. I think it can sometimes be a useful marker for people who need to put a past behind them, too.
Dearie,
Your wonderful meditation on names gives me a chance to ponder my own odd name situation. My parents, my sister, and my wife (you!) all call me Michael, which I’ve preferred since my twenties. When I was in school growing up in the Midwest, I was of course “Mike” to my friends. “Michael” would have been considered pretentious and prissy. When I was an exchange student in Finland for a year, at age 17, my name name was pronounced “Meek-eh” which is how a Finn pronounces the spelling M-I-K-E. When I gather with my Finnish friends, I am still “Meek-eh.” At college, for my first three years I was back with “Mike” among friends. Then, I went to Kenya for a year where my name was Anglicized to Michael, which I liked. My African friends in the village where I spent time also called me “Bwana Mike.” A year later, at Oxford, I shifted permanently to Michael, among friends and, especially, girlfriends. “Michael” seemed far more romantic than “Mike.” (I considered trying “Mick,” but lacked the fiber to pull that off. One of my law clerks called me “Boss,” which was thrilling, since it is Bruce Springsteen’s nom de guerre.) Now, I am often called “Judge,” by people who mainly know me in my work capacity. My niece and nephew call me “Unc,” and my grandchildren call me “Grandpa.” Outside work, people sometimes ask me whether I want to be called “Mike” or “Michael,” and I still worry that people will find it pretentious if I say I prefer Michael, which I do, mostly. Also, I sometimes worry that boyhood friends used to calling me “Mike” will think that I have gotten snooty if I use “Michael.” Mostly, I tell people, when they ask, that they can call me Mike or Michael, whichever they prefer, but sometimes, if I’m feeling courageous, I will say: “It’s Michael: like Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and Michael Ponsor.” My name has undergone metamorphoses (Michael, Mike, Meek-eh, Bwana Mike, Judge, Unc, Grandpa, etc.) as my life life has evolved, and the somewhat complicated nature of what I’m called, or call myself, reflects a complex life. You, my dear, are sometimes “Nanse” to me, and now “Nana” to the grandchildren, which I love . . .
I was born on the 4th of July, during the close of World War II. My father was away on duty when my mother delivered me and she chose my middle name – Independence – which, I think, was a way of raising her fist in the air. It was a tough name as a child, long and difficult to spell. During the ’60’s, people would think that I had made it up. Now, of course, I love it. Very few friends manage to forget my birthday. I only wish it were a “family” name and could be passed along to a future generation but it doesn’t work as well if you weren’t born on the 4th of July. I’ve never been called Independence as a name or even Indie. Occasionally, childhood friends have called me Boo, short for my last name, Bowie. Like “Nancy”, my first name, Sally, is old fashioned, from a former time. There aren’t many Sallys around and if there is one, she is often really a Sarah. Thanks for this fun conversation, my dear friend Nancy.
Ooooh, Indie. It’s way too late in our acquaintance to change names, but it fits you perfectly!
“It’s just a label, though one with a lot of personal history. For all its faults, I now regard my name with resigned affection.” Those lines sum it up. My mom said she picked her children’s names because they weren’t common. (My middle name, Rose, is after a paternal great grandma. My dad often called me Rosie.) In my 7th decade, I have only met 2 other Monas. A doctor I worked with often referred to me as Lisa after Mona Lisa. My favorite alternate moniker came from my second granddaughter when I told her that I was a little girl once. “Phh. And now you’re just Bramma Nona.”
Bramma Nona — I love it! I would have given my eye teeth to be a Mona as a kid, but I especially like it now — short for “Madonna” (“my lady”)… Very elegant!
In 6th and 7th grade, I would have sold my soul for a nice, American-sounding name like Nancy. At a time when classrooms were populated with Barbaras and Lindas and, yes, Nancys, I was Esther, or, as it was pronounced in the Somerville and Cambridge neighborhoods that I grew up in, “Estah.”. That was such a rare name that whenever I heard it called, I answered, assuming it was for me. Even when biblical names became fashionable–Rachel, Rebecca, etc.–Esther was not among them.The only good thing about it was that it was hard to make a nickname of it–“Essie” was tried by some of my classmates, but it never took. There was a brief period, when “The Thin Man” began airing on TV, however, when I was called “Asta,” the name of the little dog featured in that series. But the travails of being an Esther were nothing compared to the grief that my last name caused me: Purpel (!) But that’s a story for another blog posting….
It’s like girls with curly hair envying girls with straight hair and vice versa! I love Asta…. And yes, I need to do a post on family names, too — eventually. Maybe YOU should do it!
Dear Nancy, what a fun conversation! I still have a bit of a struggle with my name(s): “Theodore”, my given name, I have never answered to; I was “Scotty” at home, apparently the obvious nickname for a first son with the last name Scott; I was “Teddy” at school until fourth grade, when I became, and remain still, “Ted”. But the struggle began in adulthood, when my problematic older sister tried calling me “Ted”. I found it drove me crazy — she had no right to be calling me by my “real world” name! To this day I am Scotty to family (and those who first knew me through my family), and Ted to everyone else, a distinction I for some reason preserve assiduously.
I love thinking of you as Scotty! (It brings back my Star Trek days….) But Ted fits you much better. That business of who knows you by what name is fascinating. My brother is “Hank” to some people in his life and “Richard” to others, and he veers back and forth, depending on the mood of the year….