Palash Week 2 - Just a Name
“Wait, how do you say your name again?”
It is a perfectly reasonable question.
My name is Palash. It is six letters long and it is not particularly complicated after you hear it, yet somehow, I have heard several different versions of it over the years. At some point, you begin to recognize when someone is attempting to say your name and you patiently wait to see what happens.
The funny part is that a name is probably one of the first things we learn about someone, but also one of the last things we actually think about. We exchange names within seconds of meeting one another. “Hi, I’m ______. Nice to meet you.” Done.
But then, that one title follows you everywhere.
Teachers call it during attendance. Friends yell it to get your attention. You list it on the top of every assignment and even on every account you create.
After a while, it becomes hard to remove that designation.
If someone randomly said “Palash” across a room full of people, I would turn around without hesitation. In reality, it is just a collection of various sounds. It neither describes what I look like nor what kind of person I am. There is no reason that such a combination of letters should be so deeply connected to my identity.
And yet, they are.
What makes it much stranger is that other people can take your name and make their own versions of it.
Sometimes they shorten it, maybe even turn it into a nickname that has nothing to do with your actual name. Fortunately or unfortunately, it can stick, and eventually you respond to it automatically too.
So now there are multiple words that can all mean me.
I think that is what is particularly interesting about identity. A name starts off as something someone else assigns to you. But eventually, you spend years filling it with your own memories, mistakes, accomplishments, embarrassing moments, and all the other things that make you.
The name doesn’t change, but the person behind it does.
It is technically just a piece of language, without meaning, but over time, it becomes something much greater: a word with the capability to embody an entire person.
Hi Palash. I can personally relate to having a unique name that other people struggle to pronounce. Rukmini, while a common name in my parent’s home country, usually tends to leave substitute teachers with a real head-scratcher while calling out attendance. I’ve been called by several different variations of my name, “Rukqueenie,” or “Rimini,” or even “Rumkini,” so I understand the feeling of responding to names that are incorrect. As many struggles as I have had with mispronunciation in my life, I never thought about the actual significance of a name. I thought it was fascinating how you described a name as just a collection of sounds that we are just given at birth, that has no significance to our character or our personality, mainly because we haven’t even had a chance to develop that yet. It’s really poetic how you described a name as growing over time with a person, because in my life, my friends, parents, and peers all have names that I remember and associate with their personal characteristics. Eventually, when I hear one of their names in public, I immediately think of the person I know to embody that name. These memories really are encapsulated in just a bunch of letters that grew into the people we are today, and that is a valuable insight to have.
ReplyDeletePalash, I enjoyed how you started talking about how a name is such a simple yet significant thing. Your name is something that is heard daily and it follows you everywhere, but isn’t everything about you. Although my own name is easy to say, I can tell that there are different nuances in pronunciation coming from different people.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you pointed out that a name just happens to be “a combination of letters” that does not describe or show what kind of person you are. I never thought that a name, in a plain sense, is something that straightforward; when I thought about a name, I thought about the person behind it and who they are. But, to relate the two, they are completely different things that are interwoven together that seem inseparable.
I thought it was interesting that you observed how throughout one’s life, they build on to their name. So, all the associations we have with the name originate from their personality, face, and manner of speech are created with each interaction with them. It is like their name indirectly is a collection of themselves, in a way.
Your connection of how just a few letters can create and hold something as large as a person’s memory was such a compelling way to end your blog!
Just like you, and many others in our city, my name has also been constantly mispronounced, and I remember always being super confused when I was younger because I thought it was super simple to pronounce, but I now realize that was completely wrong.
ReplyDeleteYou had a very interesting way about thinking about names: that they are just a “collection of various sounds,” but thinking about it, that applies to all words. You could argue anything is just a collection of different things: a book, a collection of letters, a painting, a collection of colors, but I don’t think that at all discredits the thing. I still completely understand the point you were trying to make, I just found that very interesting.
Your ideas regarding the identity tied to a name were particularly interesting to me, because you're completely right, despite not choosing what name we receive, it often feels the most personal.
Not at all discrediting your previous work, the paragraphing on this one was done way better. Like when I saw it so split up I assumed it would feel disconnected, but after reading it that was definitely not the case. I also quite enjoy your use of dialogues to simulate your own life experiences and how you make it fit perfectly into your writing. The flow of your writing also works very well, but most of all, I like how abstract and intricate your blogs are, they have been very interesting to read.