I suppose the inability to name things is the point of this blog post.
(I actually don't know what the point of this blog post is. I never know. If I say I do, I'm lying. I'm a big proponent of the "fake it 'til you make it" mentality.)
So my name. My name (as you undoubtedly know) is Alexis Faith Ancona. Nothing super complicated. My parents didn't insist on spelling my name Ehleksis (lookin' at you, Xavier) and though my last name elicits inevitable snake jokes from virtually everyone I meet (including that stranger at an away game in Portland that one time. Dude, I don't even know you. Please don't laugh and tell me my last name is one vowel and one consonant away from being "Anaconda." I promise you I'm already aware of that), "Ancona" really isn't that complicated either.
What I'd like to know, then, is why so many people either forget or mispronounce my name. I suppose it's not so much mispronouncing as it is just calling me something that's not my name (ie. Alex, Alexa, Alexi). It's a frequent occurrence in my life, and it makes me unreasonably angry. (I said unreasonably so you would know I'm self-aware that I shouldn't be so bothered by this, but I am.)
When I was eight (nine? ten? seven? I was little), I had a friend named McKayla (I don't know if that's how she spelled her name. Why can't we agree on one spelling for different names?). McKayla and I hung out a lot: every Sunday after church, in fact. We went to summer camp together one year, played Frogger, got in arguments about bikinis, and ate a ridiculous amount of humus. I knew her for quite a while--probably two or three years (before she moved to the south. I've lost a crazy amount of friends to the south).
During the whole time I knew her, she always called me Alexa. I never corrected her because I didn't want to upset her. I had it in my head that if I told her my name was "AlexIS" not "AlexA" (you should definitely read that in Hermione Granger's snottiest know-it-all voice), I would come across as snooty. Then it just got to the point where it would simply be awkward if I corrected her. "We've known each other for six months, and you're just NOW telling me I've been saying your name wrong?" So I didn't.
When I was thirteen, I went to Canada to work at camp, all my campers called me "Alex." I guess those extra two letters were just hard to remember.
My youth leader at Shiloh Chapel only remembered my name after turning it into a mnemonic device. "Alex is..." and he would fill in the blank. It became a running joke at youth group. Whenever anyone said it, though, I always filled it in with "Alex is...not my name." or "Alex is...a dumb name" (sorry to all you Alex-es [how do you plural a name??] out there. I was a bitter twelve-year-old).
My first semester of college, I went to virtually all bro-sis events, hung out with my brother hall, tried to be super social and step out of my comfort zone and whatever, and at the end of the semester during a Christmas party, my brother RA called me "Rachel." (which, oddly enough, is a name people call me a lot. I guess I just have a Rachel face)
There's a girl in my Advanced Composition class who I've known since freshman year who still calls me "Alexa" regardless of the half a dozen times I've told her my name's Alexis.
The point of all these stories, I guess, is to communicate that this is a surprisingly frequent issue in my life. I've tried to pass it off as people being bad with names, but I've always thought that was a poor excuse. My good friend* The Office writer/actress Mindy Kaling affirmed my suspicions in her book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?:
I don't think it should be socially acceptable for people to say they are "bad with names." No one is bad with names. That is not a real thing. Not knowing people's names isn't a neurological condition; it's a choice. You choose not to make learning people's names a priority. It's like saying, "Hey, a disclaimer about me: I'm rude."**I just feel names are really important. I always took mine to heart. I had one of those bookmarks you get from Christian bookstores that tells you the meaning of your name and has a Bible verse on it. According to this bookmark, "Alexis" means "helper of mankind." I took that really seriously growing up. One time, I accidentally took a card game home from school, and I cried for an hour in my room because I had stolen something and did the opposite of what my name meant.
I remember watching an episode of the old Tarzan TV series and there was a bad guy named Alexis. That's when I found it that it's a boys' name in Russia. I've also been unreasonably proud of that ever since.
It makes me feel really, REALLY good about myself when someone uses my name when talking to me. I don't mean a creepy amount of times like at the beginning and end of each sentence, but like, "You look nice today, Alexis." or "Hey! How are you doing, Alexis?" Things like that. It just makes it special.
This is a pretty long blog post, but I promise I'm almost done.***
In Genesis, God commanded Adam to name all the animals. I've always taken that to imply that names are super important. Some of my favourite studies in devotions and chapels and sermons were on the names of God. He's just really good at coming up with names. I mean, telling Moses He is "I Am" is a great way of communicating His identity. He is. I feel like it's a way of saying He Is Everything. He Is All That Matters.
And that's what it comes down to, I guess. Names communicate identity. You read all kinds of mythology and fantasy about the power of a name. That's why God calls His people "by name." He's not just calling to people in general, but has called each of us individually, especially, lovingly by name. When given a name, we're no longer part of the masses, a blur in a sea of faces, we become individual. We were deemed important enough to have a name.
So I guess my plea is don't forget that. Don't forget all the people you see have names. And if you want to make someone happy, learn theirs, and don't forget it.
I see the city lights all around me. Everyone's obscure; ten million people each with their problems. Why should anyone care? And in Your eyes I can see: I am not just a man, vastly lost in this world. Lost in a sea of faces. Your body's the bread, Your blood is the wine because You traded Your life for mine. -Kutless, "Sea of Faces"
*(For legal reasons, I have to tell you that I actually do not know Mindy Kaling personally, though I wish I did.)
**(I should make my own disclaimer that I also have used the excuse "I'm bad with names." I apologize. Sometimes, I can be a bad person.)
***(I wasn't actually almost done.)
A final note: Don't worry if you forget my name. I won't actually freak out. Also: I'm a fan of nicknames and I do have some friends who call me "Lex," "Lexi," and my brothers call me "Lu." The instances to which I refer in this post are when people simply don't know my actual name.
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