On Names

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Rose Group Ii Eros Series No. 5 by Hilma af Klint, 1907

‘Math’ was the family name for my younger brother, Matthew. I’m not sure how it came about. Maybe a nurse scribbled down the contraction in the hospital, maybe my toddler self couldn’t handle the full Matthew, maybe my parents envisaged a career in American algebra. Regardless, Matthew was Math until he wasn’t. Until the day I heard a friend refer to him as ‘Matt’.

Who was this alien ‘Matt’? What was this new hardness? This strange plosive? Unbeknownst to me, my brother had rebranded in secondary school. Matthew was now Matt and remains so. Except to me. I still can’t use it – even though my brother is more a ‘Matt’ than a ‘Matthew’ and ‘Math’ is almost obsolete. I’ve adopted ‘Broski’ instead (because I’m a #CoolOlderSister like that).

I brought this up with a friend today, and she mentioned how her sister narrowly avoided being called ‘Sunshine’. In her words: “She’s brilliant, but she’s definitely not a Sunshine. More of a Midnight. Or a Storm”. Part of me wanted to ask if her sister was actually a horse.

Choosing a name like ‘Sunshine’ seems a little unfair. You have no idea what your kid is going to be like, and yet you are changing the ease in which different lives fit. It’s harder being a grouchy Sunshine, or a goth Rose, or an indoorsy Hunter. At school, a Chelsea presented as an anti-Chelsea. She was a bit of a loner, with wild hair, flushed face and unrolled skirt. This discrepancy meant she was mocked remorselessly. It got so bad that she resorted to deed poll. Chelsea became Josephine. After seeing that, I’ve always thought it better leave the doors open, to allow someone to create the connotations with their name as they go. (Although the better answer is to teach teenagers not to be little shits.)

The very idea of naming a child seems so strange to me. Before the first holiday, before they’ve met all their family, before they’ve eaten solid food, before they’ve crawled, or you know how they laugh, what they love, who they are – before all of this, you name them. You determine the very first outlines people will experience. Their first introduction, the email signature on job applications, the name on the album cover (or the ‘real’ name in pub quiz rounds). How the hell does anyone decide that? Madness. Maybe I’ll follow the artist-formerly-known-as-Prince and opt for a symbol instead.

That being said, I love when an audacious name fits a person perfectly. ‘Cesca Peacock’ – writer, obviously. The perfectly named ‘Champion’ family at university, 6 siblings all at Oxford, all sporty, all tall, all good-looking. My wonderfully smiley friend ‘Joly’. The bohemian couple from school, Nicholas Oliver Leonard Yorston-Javaud who dated a Melissa Tamzin Lily Rose-Miles. They broke up, which is probably a good thing for those unborn ‘Yorston-Javaud-Rose-Miles’.

I also love women who rename themselves. There’s something fantastically ballsy about this. An old teammate adopted the gorgeous portmanteau ‘Mariella’. Every time I heard it, I thought of a headstrong eight-year-old at a piano in a big house, setting the script, asserting her own way in the world. Another is my great-grandmother who became Maria Sevie. She’d escaped to the UK from Germany, and cannily realised (1) German surnames didn’t go down too well in the UK (even if you were Jewish) and (2) as a potter, she could sell more pots if she sounded French. Think George Eliot, Lady Gaga, Marilyn Monroe. Women who are brave enough to rename themselves tend to be cool women.

Last year, I seriously toyed with joining them. I liked the idea of belonging to that group, and realised I could do the cheats version. As I travelled to new places that no one knew who I was. I could rebrand, try out a new name, and avoid any awkward conversations about why I was changing, or reminding people about what I now wanted to go by. The rebrand without the bravery. Whilst travelling, I could slip into a new name with little more than a couple of ‘but I’m known as…’s. To the people I met on my travels or in Sweden, ‘Lauren’ would become little more than a fun fact. Something that friends would discover after years and be shocked that they did not know.

As I thought about it more, I thought about how my new name could help me get better. I could use it to help me work on my flaws. It seemed like the perfect plan. Every time someone spoke to me, I’d get a check, a reminder, a micro-dose of self-improvement. And one of the things I really wanted to fix was my pride. It’s one of my least favourite things about myself. I have a proud streak that turns nasty if I feel like someone has wronged me, has made a fool out of me or unfairly damaged my reputation or name. I go into full on Machiavellian/ Bond Villain/ Toddler Tantrum mode (not cute, but I’m working on it). So I figured I’d pick a name to remind me of the dangers of pride.

This all sounds very nice in theory, except when I look back and realise that for a good four months, I genuinely toyed with the idea of going by ‘Medea’. For those of you who don’t nerd out on Greek myths, the name that I wanted shouted out in Starbucks cafes, heading up emails from professors, yelled out on a hockey pitch comes from someone best known for murdering her two children in revenge after her husband hurts her pride.

It probably ticked the self-improvement box. It definitely didn’t tick the socially acceptable box. Nice one, Loz.

So it looks like I’ll be sticking with Lauren for now. And there’s at least a small reason to do so. I knew that ‘Lauren’ came from ‘laurel’, the waxy glossy-leaved tree. What I didn’t know was that ‘laurel’ is, in turn, a symbol of song, the Muses and Apollo in Ancient Greece. It is laurel leaves that crown poets and rhetoricians, and it’s a laurel staff the Muses give to Hesiod in the beginning of the Theogony. As someone who – maybe, hopefully, fingers-crossedly – wants to keep on writing (and who could often really use some form of divine inspiration) ‘Lauren Levine’ isn’t too bad a place to start. I’ll put ‘Medea’ on ice for now.