I was born Robin Schuyler Spaihts; the last name is a monstrosity that makes no sense in German or English, and it's spelled at least five different ways in my own extended family--my father doesn't spell it the sameway his father did. Nobody who reads it can pronounce it ("spates," for the record). Nobody who hears it can spell it. I'm not even the first member of the family to bail out; by grandfather's brother gave up and changed his name to Smith many years ago. (Well, actually, he took the name Smit, but his sons seem to have got that wrong and wound up with Smith. I don't know how it happens. It has to be genetic.)
Originally on my brother's suggestion, I settled at a very young age on Robin Skyler as a likely nom de plume for the writing of the great novels I hazily planned. Over time I grew to like it well enough to fantasize about adopting it fully. And so, when I thought of adulthood, I assumed I would have changed my name by then, and imagined my adult self to be Robin Skyler.
I don't know if this is true of everyone, but whenever I thought of my future self, I imagined an idealized, absurdly magnified self: heroic and adventurous, learned in all things, incorruptible. I was satisfied with no goal lower than the permanent, perfect repair of all trouble in the world, accomplished singlehandedly or very nearly so. A little like a Robert Ludlum novel.
When my eighteenth birthday approached, I began making concrete plans to change my name legally, but I found myself curiously daunted by it. Thing is, all of that constant fantasizing about being a perfect human being had been slapped with the label of Robin Skyler, and I knew I was nowhere near being such a person. I wanted the name, but I began to confront the fact that my life was proceeding on its own, and no particular agency was there to confer all of my coveted virtues on me in time to have any rightful claim on the name.
I started the change anyway (it took four years and two states to get it done). In its way, this may have been the cheekiest thing I ever did. Forced to concede that I might never be the man I had wanted to be, I took that man's name anyway, and hoped to catch up eventually.
I never have, certainly. But I have often felt that the effort to live up to those old daydreams has held me to much higher standards than I might have for myself otherwise.
Names have tremendous power. I have always been a little disappointed not to have been born to a culture whose people are named for traits or actions of their own, or renamed several times during their lives. How is it that the one thing most intimately associated with you can have no trace of you in it?
I think a lot about the naming of things. Titling is very possibly my favorite part of writing, and by too many authors underused; I have names in my head for simple objects, for peronal behaviors, for people I've never spoken to. I have strong views about the rhythm of names, what first names are acceptable given what last names, a whole lexicon of connotations associated with ostensibly simple names. I don't think people should be named after other people. I like rare names. I like names that have meaning in their bearers' own language. Or in another.
And though my culture does dictate that my children must have permanent names affixed to them at birth, I will make sure they know they can later choose their own. And in the meantime I am free to give them more than one, nicknames, as many as I like--and use them.