What’s in a name?
My parents have a wicked sense of humor. Often corny, yes.
But wicked nonetheless.
Now, some might think I meant “wicked” as in slang for “way cool” or “beyond hilarious.”
Ohh ho, nah-uh, I do mean wicked.
I swear they are always on the look-out for the purposeful enjoyment of any accidental ridiculousness. And a particularly favorite subject is their offspring. I do not kid when I say this has been the case from the moment I was born, as can be evidenced from the story of how my first name came about.
Or, I should say, how it almost didn’t come about.
My Chinese name was decided by my paternal grandfather and apparently that’s the only name that really mattered. So, my dad relishes in explaining how if it weren’t for my dear granny Anne (an elderly woman who was once a neighbor to us), they were going to take the nurse’s suggestion to English-name me…
RUBY.
Mm, yeah. Whew! Thank you, granny Anne. I owe you a big one!
However, like most things, the story doesn’t end there.
I’m not very close to either of my own grandmothers due to circumstance (one has been in a coma for the past 10 years) and temperament (the other, whom I respect very much, favors the males in the family: son, son-in-laws, and grandsons).
But granny Anne is so sweet.
She is the reason why I listed that I want be a grandmother before I die in my 3’s meme…because, well, I never really had one myself. And she brilliantly suggested that they take the combination of my parents’ names, John and Annie.
To create Johann.
Pronounced as “JO-han,” but if you’re like many of my past teachers who were surprised when a little Chinese girl instead of a little German boy raised her hand for role call…you probably thought “YO-han," like in Johann Sebastian Bach.
Then, why (when I've come to love how different my first name is) do I still use "Joanne"?
Well, it goes back to old habits dying hard.
When I discovered the existence of nicknames in elementary school, I nicknamed myself “Joanne” in an effort to make my name closer to the Granny Anne I admired so very much. A nickname which has obviously stayed with me throughout the years.
So that now “Joanne” is who I am just as much “Johann” came to be as I matured.
Does make me wonder though, as it’s often touted that it's not the shirt who makes the person but rather the person who makes the shirt instead: did I grow into my name or did my name develop who I am today?
I mean, I honestly can't imagine myself answering to the name of "Ruby." However I'm confident that if fate had made that my first name instead, I'd somehow make it a part of my identity. Though I also wonder if I'd still be the same sort of person today as a Chinese girl named Ruby instead of Johann.
Who knows, maybe a more feminine name might've made me less of tomboy growing up?
(Keep in mind that I ask this while highly doubting it myself)
You see, my mom has a very pretty Chinese name, "Gold Cloud," and compared to her 4 older sisters who all have masculine names, she was definitely the most carefree and tomboyish child of them all. In fact, my grandmother sent her to an all-girls Catholic boarding school for high school with the sole purpose of reining in her wayward tendencies!
Props to her for surviving that as I can't imagine more than 1 year in such an environment—my sister and I did a brief stint at an all-girls school Hathaway Brown the year we lived in Ohio... And yeeeah, I'm pretty damn sure I broke every single rule in regards to the HB school uniforms I disliked wearing so very much.
Anyhow, it's interesting that in Asian cultures—and maybe this is true across the board—having a…uniquely different or a baser name is thought to be advantageous to the destiny of the person. Therefore, my Chinese name (besides being only 2 characters compared to the usually favored 3 characters and surprise-surprise! masculine as well) also sounds exactly like another common Chinese word.
Often, people who know Chinese do a double-take and exclaim, “Really! You mean like…”
Yes, you heard right. That is my name.
And now you're probably wondering what the story behind THAT name is. Well, you'll just have to keep wondering, my friends.
Because I tell ya, this wickedness is hereditary! ;)
