Many years prior to being "blocked on FB by a super-duper crazy religious relative" I felt that this particular relative hated me. Hate is a strong word and I use it in its most forceful context here. When I was born I had the misfortune to have been named after this particular relative. It's an unusual name, one which I would imagine she and I were the only people in the US with. And yes, I got teased in school because of it. It bothered me that I shared this name with someone who so venomously hated me. So I changed it.
When I first started my FB experiment and I got this particular super-duper crazy religious relative to friend me I thought, "Mmmmmmm...." Several weeks went by and I thought perhaps I was wrong, perhaps she really does love me and I made a mistake by changing my name for the reasons I stated. But it was too much for her to take I guess. I made the tragic mistake of criticizing her politics, even ever so slightly for her sensibilities. When she unfriended/blocked me my first thoughts were, "Why did I ever doubt myself? I was so right in changing my name and I'm so glad I did it."
Before I actually went though the task of changing my name I thought long and hard over the reasons. It hurt me to think that a relative who I had grown up around could just hate me so quickly and causally. As I thought about this particular relative and her daughter it occurred to me that Christianity was perfect for their type of personalities. They are the Christians that type everything in ALL CAPS on the Internet and refuse to watch any other news station other than Fox News. They are the people who think Sarah Palin is a smart woman who was divinely destined to be the next President but that "nigger" got in her way. They are the people who will not consider that they might be wrong and are not open-minded enough to consider a different idea. They are stagnated in their worldview and they are perfect for that conservative crazy mind-set that we see so many Christians gravitate towards. I couldn't, in good faith, be named after a person like that so I started the process of changing my name in 2007.
It was in the first quarter of 2008 that I swore in court that I wasn't changing my name for hidden or illegal reasons. It was not a happy day for me although I did feel some relief. I decided long before that date not tell relatives about my name change. I knew they wouldn't understand and that it would be twisted out of context. I didn't do it to make statement to them. I'll admit, it was selfish. I did it for me.
2 comments:
A name change is a personal thing and I would probably do the same thing if I was named after some hateful douchebag.
I can't help but think of the Friends episode where Phoebe changed her name to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock and Paul Rudd's Mike character, in protest, said he was going to change his name to Crap Bag "If you have a hard time remembering it, just think of a bag of crap". ;-)
I'm not so sure I would change my name if it were Jean, I would probably just try to definitely not BE LIKE MY SISTER. :)
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