My name is my story

My name is MaiLynn Marie Stormon-Trinh. It’s a mouthful, I know. But so much is wrapped up in those four words. I am the only child of my Vietnamese father and American Caucasian mother of Norwegian descent. My name is a combination of these three different cultures, stories from long ago and traditions that have been passed down through many generations.

My namesake is a yellow flower that blossoms on plum trees all across my father’s home country. It is a lake in the International Peace Gardens in between Canada and North Dakota where my Norwegian ancestors first settled. It is a legacy of lords who ruled Vietnam for over 200 years. It is my mother’s middle name, her mother’s middle name and a long line of mothers that came before.

Those seven syllables haven't always been easy.

My name is regularly misspoken as May-lynn, Mayling, Madeline or some other variation. It is often misread as Marilyn.

The enormity of it, MaiLynn Marie Stormon-Trinh (pronounced My-Lynn Ma-ree Stormon-Tring by the way), is often long enough to put people off of trying to remember any part of it at all.

I’ve both loved and loathed my name at times. In one sense, I feel grateful for a unique name that connects me to my heritage. On the other hand, perpetually educating people on how to say it right can be disheartening.

I’m not only one is this predicament.

Last year Radio New Zealand reported a story on Māori Language Commission findings that found that constantly mispronouncing the Māori names of children makes them disengage from the classroom. It got me ruminating and looking deeper into the body of research around the influence our names have on our lives.

What I found didn’t exactly thrill me.

Psychological, neurological and sociological research agrees on this: Our names are powerful. No matter whether they're common or unique, or culturally significant or not, what our parents decide to call us becomes intricately intertwined in our sense of self.

Studies have found that our names act as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. The smarter, more attractive and more successful sounding our names are, the more likely we will exhibit those traits in life.

Likewise, our names also influence our opportunities and the way people feel about us. Commonplace names make people more likable and trustworthy [pdf link]. People with foreign or unusual names are less likely to get call backs when they apply for a job. They are also less likely to hold top positions in companies.

A name can also make a person feel like more of an outsider than she might already be.

As a child, I hated the first day of school and relief teachers because it meant a roll call disaster in front of all of my classmates. It meant having to stand up to the teacher, which was a nightmare to a shy, introverted kid. It made me feel different.

Even now my heart speeds up a little every time I have to introduce myself to someone new. Just because I am older doesn’t make it any less awkward that my best friend’s 80-year-old aunt still gets confused every time we remind her of my name. I’ve worked in jobs where most of my colleagues call me the wrong thing, and every time a barista asks me for a name for my order, my first instinct is to blurt out an alias.

I’ll never know if my name has prevented me from getting jobs, or if people find me less likable or think twice about confiding in me because of what I am called. But I do know from my own actions and feelings that my name has dictated the way I feel about other people.

If a person can’t say my name correctly after being corrected more than three times, I’m not going to bother forming any sort of real relationship with them. I can’t help it – I take it as an affront when people don’t learn how to say the most important words in my life the correct way. Who knows how many meaningful relationships I’ve missed out on?

My name has influenced my personality in other ways too. I’m sure of it.

As a naturally quiet little girl, the regular butchering of my name probably made me more insecure than my conventionally named peers.  After all, if names truly are intertwined with our identities, then the constant mispronunciation of a child’s name is a distortion of her very character. Life is hard enough for a young mixed-race girl already going through the process of figuring out who she is without adding this to it all. Talk about making a kid feel a little unworthy and weird.

Despite all the beautiful meanings behind my name, it turns out it has influenced my life in lots of depressing ways.

But I’ve mostly decided that it’s a good name. Sure, I sometimes wonder if my life would have been different (and better) had I been born an Emma or a Melanie. I’ve thought “hell, maybe I should even change it?” Tens of thousands of people do so every year.

But I know this line of thinking is bullshit. Just because my name may have helped shape the person I’ve become doesn’t mean that changing it now will fix any of my identity problems. A part of me believes that learning to accept and love my name is really about learning how to accept and love myself, which, even though it’s a cliché, is the real battle, I suspect.

I once read a book by a great modern dancer and choreographer named Twyla Tharp. She wrote that when her parents named her they didn’t give her any option but to live a big, creative and unusual life.

So at least I have that going for me. It’s an argument I can get behind too. If anything, my name has helped an introverted girl stand out in an increasingly homogenous world.

Just like Twyla and all the students who were interviewed in the Radio New Zealand story, my name is a powerful representation of who I am. When I introduce myself, I am not just regurgitating what’s printed on my birth certificate. I’m telling the story of where I come from and who I am.

In response to one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, I say there is a lot in a name especially if it’s an uncommon one. Just maybe the easiest step to a more accepting community is simply getting it right.

This content was brought to you with funding from New Zealand On Air.