Women With My Name

The sting of lineage

Welcome back to the Sunday Letter, which is also sometimes a Monday letter. I’m back from vacation, with many thanks to Cydney Hayes and Karla Méndez for covering while I was away.

Pierre Mornet

A friend and I were chatting about baby names recently. I’ve been married for nearly five years, so the question of how to name a hypothetical future child has crept into my mind here and there, even though I am quick to remind myself that that sort of decision is far, far into the future for us. Still, the question crosses my mind. More specifically, the question of whose last name to use; to hyphenate, or not to hyphenate. 

When we got married in 2019, I was surprised that family members kept asking if I was planning to change my last name. It hadn’t ever occurred to me that I would; I’d kept my last name as naturally as L had kept his. I was always so attached to my names, the women they represent. My first name, for my dad’s mother and sister. My middle name, for the aunt that raised him. My last name, for his long journey here from there, a reminder of the blood connecting us both to a different place and time. 

For many years, when I thought of having children, I imagined passing down my last name too. I wanted to lace my heritage through theirs, a sentiment that became more urgent after my dad died. Even with nieces and nephews sharing the same last name as me, I felt the pressure, though I couldn’t quite understand why. So I polled my friends on Instagram, asking why they had or hadn’t changed their last names. About half said they’d hadn’t, for similar reasons to my own. The other half said they had, and their reasons varied: some wanted to shed negative associations with their own fathers, some hoped to benefit professionally from their spouse’s names, some wanted to build anew from a shared name, and some wanted to avoid racist remarks about their maiden names. I’d been surprised to see so many women I knew changing their names, but I hadn’t stopped to fully consider the complicated feelings they might have about it too. 

I told all of this to the friend I was chatting with about baby names. She was in the process of deciding whether to change her own last name after her upcoming nuptials. I mentioned that I’d kept my own, though I knew it might cause headaches down the road for naming any hypothetical future children. I knew that my own mom, who also never changed her last name, found it awkward at times to have a different last name than me. Still, I wonder whether my desire to pass on my last name is just my ego equating naming with ownership. Would I be bestowing an expectation too heavy for the hypothetical future children to bear?

My friend mentioned that she knew of a newlywed couple from two very traditional families. They would be expected to name their children after both sets of families, or neither family at all. One could not have only one. I wondered aloud which family traditions might carry into the future, and which would become outdated as our generation became parents and grandparents.

A few weeks ago in Cuba I met a man who asked me for my name. When I answered truthfully, I caught even myself off guard. I was so used to calling myself Rachel among strangers that it was a reflex at that point. He raised his eyebrow and said, “Ah yes, Raquel is a common name here.” I laughed, trying to explain that it wasn’t common where I was from. He shrugged. 

I felt disconnected from my name as a child. It felt both too feminine and too adult for me, though I also felt embarrassed when people asked what it meant and I’d have to reply “a female sheep.” I remember wishing my name was Rachelle as a child; something ‘prettier’ would be easier for people to spell, less confusing. I hated the name Raquel, and I envied my sister’s citrusy, summery name. It wasn’t until I actually visited Chile for the first time as a teenager that I understood my connection to the name. I was standing in my aunt Raquel’s house while my grandma Raquel napped in her room down the hall. Two women I’d never met, but with the same first and last names as me. I was mortified to realize I’d bled onto my aunt’s couch; I didn’t know enough Spanish to explain what I’d done. She took my hands, led me to the bathroom to clean up, and wordlessly knelt to clean the spot where I’d been sitting. When she led me back to the couch she brought me a blanket and warm drink to sip on. It was the first and last time I ever saw either of them. 

*

I often think of an essay that Elamin Abdelmahmoud wrote in 2018, where he describes giving his daughter a “clunky” name:

“I wanted you to have my last name. And I wanted it to be a burden. And blood is a burden, love. It should be. It should be heavy, a weight you carry. All of us carry that unshakeable chain. We come into this world tied to a lineage, and therefore a part of an ongoing story. All of that is in your last name: you, an Abdelmahmoud, in a place like Canada. You don’t know it yet, but every time someone asks can you spell that? you’re going to feel the sting of lineage, the gentle hand of ancestry.”

In university, I took a class on Latin American politics. The professor was brand new to the department, so no one knew what to expect when she showed up on the first day with punk rock hair and a thick Spanish accent. She told us about her background in Chile, and I marvelled at how the story of her family’s exile mirrored my dad’s. She read through the attendance sheet and paused when she got to my name, reading it out slowly and with every rolled ‘r’ perfectly in place. It was an invitation, but I couldn’t take it. 

“That’s me,” I whispered shyly, feeling, not for the first time, like I was letting someone down by replying in English. She raised an eyebrow. “My dad is Chilean, too” I mustered. 

“Ah, yes! And what’s his name?” The community in our small town was, well, small.

“Hugo,” I replied, and she burst out laughing. “Hugh-Go?” she teased. “Hugh-Go… You mean Oo-Go, no?” I turned bright red. I ran into her recently, and even though it’s been years, she still remembered that moment. “Hugh-Go!” she laughed. I turned to flustered goop all over again, and she stopped to touch my arm, suddenly serious. “I heard about his passing,” she said. She just wanted to let me know how sorry she was. From everything she’d heard, he was a very special guy. 

*

Many years ago, when L and I had only just started dating, we met up with some friends at an acreage outside of town. The night was weird, the couple kept fighting, and so we drunkenly slipped out into the night thinking we could walk to the small town where L’s dad lived to crash at his place overnight. As we walked along the highway (again, early 20’s here, and Uber wasn’t a thing yet), it started to rain. I began to panic, realizing how far we still had to go, when suddenly L stuck out his thumb and hailed a white minivan.

“What the hell are you doing!!” I shouted at him as the driver pulled over. “Are you trying to get us killed?” 

The driver rolled down the window, revealing an older woman with a short brown bob and a concerned look on her face. “You guys okay?” We must have been soaking wet, and shivering cold. 

“Hey, sorry,” L said, “We’re just on our way into town, and can’t catch a cab, any chance you’re heading that way too?” 

She sized us up. We were less than 10 minutes away from the town. She shrugged. “Sure, I can take you guys.” 

Relieved, we piled into the back of her Dodge Caravan, thanking her profusely for saving us from the sudden downpour. How could we ever repay her? She laughed, as though it was hardly necessary.

“By the way,” she said, “my name’s Raquel. What’s yours?”