Is a poem by T. S. Eliot, but I oftentimes find it relevant to my situation.
Quote
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover--
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
So after that wall o' text, I feel I'm about to bring you a wall of text of my own.
I'm out to my immediate family, my therapist, and a good number of my friends. I'm beginning to feel that in the new year I'm going to ask them to start using my preferred name and pronouns. The problem is that I have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. (It's really a choice between two, but it's more poetic this way.)
I have my sensible everyday name, my birthname. Everyone but a handful of my friends calls me by my birthname. It's sweet and feminine and a bunch of you know or otherwise can guess what it is. I don't have a huge problem with it, I answer to it, but it doesn't sit quite right with me. Its meaning suits my personality, but it immediately pegs me as a woman, which I'm not.
My peculiar, more dignified name is Julian, a masculinized or androgynized version of my birthname. A handful of my friends call me by it. It has a very similar meaning to my birthname, it's comfortable and familiar, and I answer to it readily. However, it doesn't fit quite right. It's familiar, but it's not quite my name.
My deep and inscrutable singular Name, I feel, is Cain. It looks nice written out, it's biblical (I have a weird thing for biblical names), it sounds pretty good with my chosen middle name (Joseph), and it's the closest I've been able to find to a name sounding like me, like my name. However, it's got sinister connotations. My mom's religious, and I don't know if I want to ask her to call me by the name of the world's first murderer in her mythology. Also, since I've had a grand total of three people call me Cain out loud, it doesn't feel quite familiar yet.
So I'm ready to start the new year with a
new "new" name, but I don't know which one to use. If I go with Julian, I feel like I'll always be thinking of how that's not really my name. If I go with Cain, it'll take getting used to, I'll have to ask the friends who already call me by a preferred name to switch over, and I don't know how my mom will feel.
Thoughts, anyone, I guess? I know it's ultimately up to me, but I'm still feeling conflicted.
