My kindergarten class was so full of Heathers that by the time I got there, I had to go by Heather Ann since there was already a Heather R.
I recently read that no other name in recorded history has peaked so high (there were 24,300 babies given the name Heather in 1975 when it was the 3rd most popular female baby name in America), only to fall into unfashionable territory so completely (by 2018 there were less than 300 new Heathers according to the Social Security Administration). This somehow makes me laugh more than it should. And begin singing Wicked’s popular… I know about pop-u-lar…
The name on my birth certificate is Heather Ann Rose. The Ann was a last minute addition, it was also my Mother’s middle name. My parents were really excited about the combination of Heather and Rose, my Father’s family name. So excited, in fact, my name was almost Heather Rose Rose. No, that’s not a typo. The thinking, I heard repeated throughout my life, was that one day I would marry and give up the family name of Rose in trade for some future husband’s last name, but if Rose was also my middle name, I could keep that beautiful combination intact.
Maybe it was the repeated retelling of that story that did it, but on the day I became a Mrs. (carrying a bouquet of purple Heather, white Queen Anne’s Lace, and lots of Roses to visually represent my floral-inspired name) I had zero intention of ever changing it. I was a published writer and playwright, with dreams of seeing my name on the spines of many novels, and had an unrelated professional career already attached to the name Heather Rose. In fact, there was a hilarious thing which happened repeatedly at work which became a private joke between my husband and I. My name would precede me, either in print or conversation, and then when someone finally met me, the conversation always started with, “Oh! You’re THE Heather Rose?” This has continued even to last week when I ran into my husband’s new boss near the grocery store and he did a double take as I was introduced, “AHHH! Finally! I meet The Heather Rose!”
As an Enneagram Four, I relish being unique above all else. But I know for a fact an emphasis on THE is a wild overstatement because I am definitely not the only one. Remember how popular the name Heather was? At my childhood pediatrician’s office there was another Heather Rose, and she even shared my birth date. I never met her, but I know she exists and, owing to a mix up in our charts, that she had chicken pox two years before I did.
For me, there was never even a slight consideration I would give up the full name so thoughtfully bestowed upon me at birth. It wasn’t me trying to be stubborn. It wasn’t me taking a feminist stand. It wasn’t a protest against the centuries-old patriarchal tradition where upon marriage a woman transferred her property (and herself) unto her husband’s ownership.
I just really, really liked my name.
Casually among friends and on our annual Christmas card we were the Chases, and therefore I was often called Heather Chase. I never corrected anyone or made a big deal about it, as it didn’t bother me, but it was never my legal name. What shifted everything was a common story for many women who choose not to change their name after marriage: I gave birth to a child.
He had his own name which we’d called him in utero since the ultrasound revealed his anatomy, but our hospital would simply write baby boy or baby girl with the mother’s last name on the tiny wrist band and card on the bassinette, adding it to the board in the nursery and into the phone directory for someone trying to find a patient to deliver flowers or visit. So my son was Baby Boy Rose which felt deceitful, but they could not change it. Hospital policy, mama and baby had to match for security reasons. When friends and family came to visit, the hospital couldn’t direct them to my room because they were searching for Heather Chase, not Heather Rose. Even my own parents were surprised, “Wait, you really didn’t change your name?”
Five weeks after his birth, we found out we’d be moving to Tokyo. This required a passport for our new baby. I hear many new moms are riddled with strange, maybe even irrational worries which don’t exist before the cord is cut. Mine manifested in a panicky moment of looking into a future of enormous road blocks because no part of my name would match any part of his name. I pictured the two of us dramatically stopped while travelling across an international border. I could clearly imagine some bureaucrat holding up a hand and asking for a detailed statement of why our names weren’t the same before loudly declaring I will not allow you to take this child into France! Guards, take her away! The thought of having to explain any of my life choices to a stranger holding my passport gave me caution, especially after having just explained them to all the hospital visitors who struggled to find me.
So as we began the process of getting my son’s birth certificate and social security card, I decided I would fill out the necessary paperwork to officially add a hyphen and Chase to my last name. I told my husband this was an administrative move only, that my future novels would still bear the moniker Heather Rose, sans hyphen and Chase. He didn’t even have the briefest objection to me adding or subtracting part of my name, so it was clear this particular girl married exactly the right guy. On paper there would be something to tie me to my son, and it wouldn’t ever be a lie when someone called me Heather Chase, because Chase was officially in the mix.
Briefly fast forward twenty years and I can tell you that even with the hyphenate, more than one immigration official has held up my passport and that of my sons’ and noted the different last names as we tried to cross an international border. My irrational fear wasn’t actually all that irrational. We were never fully prohibited from entering (or leaving) another country, but I have friends for whom that isn’t true. They learned to travel with marriage and birth certificates or adoption certificates, along with notarized affidavits from the parent whose name does match their child’s stating their permission to take a minor child across borders. As of next month, both my sons will be over eighteen, able to travel freely without a parent or legal guardian, thus allowing me to finally cross at least one parental worry permanently off my list. Whew!
My legal name change was complete, but when I changed my driver’s license, the State of California would not allow a hyphen. And my whole name didn’t fit in the allotted space. So they opted to run my name together, becoming Heather Ann Rosechase. When I got the first passport with my new name, the U.S. State Department didn’t allow a hyphen either, so it became Heather Ann Rose Chase, and every renewal since then has followed suit. Which from experience I will tell you complicates a lot of things. Like flying.
When your name doesn’t exactly match your identification, airlines may deny you from boarding or charge you a lot of money to change a misspelled name. Flying a domestic flight within America without my passport? Depending on the airline’s middle name policy, my ticket must say at least Heather Rosechase because that is what my driver’s license says. Flying from my home in Hong Kong to America’s East Coast with a few domestic stops in between? Ticket has to say Heather Ann Rose Chase and I better not pull out any ID except my passport which matches exactly. I learned in the most difficult way possible that I need to be the one who reserves the flights in our family because a minor error, like adding a hyphen to the reservation, can be a very costly one!
There has been an unintended consequence after two decades of expatriate living, dealing with bureaucracies in half a dozen countries, taking extraordinary care to get it exactly right: The girl who told her husband that her future books would lack his last name on the spine, somehow became very attached to that hyphen and Chase.
But along the way I did manage to lose the Heather…
I was born in the United States, but have lived in Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Mainland China, and am currently back in Hong Kong once again. The local, official languages in these countries are Japanese, Cantonese, Portuguese, and Mandarin Chinese. Do you know what all these languages have in common? They lack a natural approximation of the ‘th’ sound.
My first name — that third most popular name in America in 1975, the most common name in my kindergarten, the first name of many famous actors (Locklear, Graham, Mills, Morris, and Headley come right to mind without Google), the title of a cult-classic film starring Wynonna Ryder, and surely the most basic, least exotic-sounding name I could possibly dream up… well, it’s an impossible tongue-twister in Asia. I’ve been called Hay-Saw, Hee-Sir, Hed-der, Hi-Zer, Hey-Lah, Hee-At-Her and so many other variations.
In Shanghai there was a big local hospital up the street from our home where I went for all my medical care from ingrown toenails to surgery. When I registered the first time for a miserable sinus infection, I handed over my passport and all the forms I’d filled out. The admin who was keying it into the computer system had no idea what to do with my four names. The name that looked least like an actual name was Heather, and she kept asking me to repeat it aloud, asking exactly what it was (it’s my name), calling a supervisor over for me to further explain how that collection of letters in that order could possibly be a name, and then engaging in a fast and furious conversation in Mandarin with all the others behind the desk about what to do. She ended up omitting it completely. Rose went into the given name spot, Chase into the family name, and Ann into ‘other.’
In the first three years we lived in Shanghai, I kept trying to get them to update this, but even the doctor with the highest fluency in English, who spent years studying and working abroad in Australia and America, told me that Heather was simply too complicated to bother with, Rose was just fine for everyone. There is a not a scrap of paper or an electronic file in that hospital with my legal name on it (note to future generations or secret government operatives trying to track down evidence of my stay in China: you won’t find anything official!).
I stopped fighting it and simply embraced my identity as Rose, using it any time I needed to give a name over the phone or on a food order because it’s so easy for almost any linguistic background to pronounce. I incorporated it into my website and my Instagram and Twitter handles. I felt a special kinship with the foreigners who arrive in America and end up changing their names so native English speakers can pronounce them. Our names are our identities and it didn’t feel great to give up a part of myself to make it easier for others.
Because I grew up hearing stories about family names and the meaning behind my own, when I had my two sons, choosing their names felt like a sacred honor.
There is a proverb that says a good name is more desirable than great riches. In that case a good name likely means reputation, but I still took choosing their names very seriously. Our first son’s name was divinely inspired. After being told as a teenager that I was unlikely to conceive, the fact that my belly was growing large with child after four years of marriage felt like a miracle. His first name means gift from God, and his middle name is both my father’s middle name and my grandfather’s first name, and means profound. Altogether, his name means profound gift from God, and each time we say his name it is a remembrance of wonder over his very existence, and a promise of the profound things our son will see and be part of throughout his life.
My second son was another remarkable surprise, and I knew without a doubt he would be the last child I would carry. We named him Benjamin, after the youngest son of Jacob in the Hebrew Bible, and gave him my father’s first name as a middle name, which means warrior. Benjamin means son of my right hand, a powerful, strong position. Put together, his name means mighty warrior, and from the minute he took his first breath he’s been fighting. Fighting for survival as a heart patient, for fairness and justice in this world, for the things he wants to create. When we say his name, we are reminded of his strength and tenacity.
Different cultures and faiths have naming traditions which vary wildly. Many of my friends in America didn’t take meaning into account when they picked a name for their children, they just liked the way it sounded, or how it started with the same letter as a parent or sibling. My husband’s family named all the girls with H names (I’m far from the only Heather in the family!) and all the boys with M names. Some picked names to honor a family member, like I did with both my sons’ middle names.
In Japan, where my firstborn son’s name was as unpronounceable as my own thanks to another iteration of the ‘th’ sound, baby girls are often given names with virtues the parents wish to bestow, and their names often end with the syllable -ko which means child. My friend Akiko’s name means bright child. Boys might be given a more practical name. Akiko’s boyfriend, the second son born to his parents, was named was Kenji. Kenji can mean strong or healthy, but it also means second, as in second born. I have known three guys named Kenzo in my life, and all of them were the second born sons in their families. It can mean modest or humble, but it also means — you guessed it, second.
We moved to Hong Kong for the first time when my sons were three and one. Hong Kong was a British colony for 156 years, right up until 1997. Naming conventions here are a mixed bag with decades of British influence layered on top of a unique Chinese culture. English is one of two official languages in Hong Kong, but not always fluently spoken. I have met people with very proper and aristocratic western names, but I’ve also met people with unusual names. Some names are indeed English words but not necessarily used as given names elsewhere, like Coffee, Starry, Purple, or Money. One friend of mine explained that kids often pick a western name for themselves when they hit kindergarten which just sticks with them into adulthood. Given names for children can be legally amended quite easily up until age eleven. That makes a lot of sense when the man you’re doing business with at the bank is named Galaxy or the receptionist at the office is named Magazine.
China is a big place with a long history. Names don’t always convey meaning, sometimes they are simply combinations of lucky-sounding or looking characters. Women usually keep their last names legally, though they might go by their husband’s informally. Hierarchy within families is strong and even with a given name of your own, you might spend a lifetime being called the word for your position in the family, like older sister or father’s aunt by marriage.
While everyone we met during our five years living in Shanghai had a Chinese given name, they often adopted a western name to aid in making connections with the multinational corporations and international community in Shanghai. A sucker for a good story, I’d always ask how someone chose their name. Often it was similar in sound to their Chinese names, like my friend Liu Qi (sounds similar to Lew Chi) who chose the western name Lucy. But other times it was a name suggested by a foreigner or inspired by a famous entertainer or fictional character. After asking dozens of people for the story of how they chose their western name, there never seemed to be any particular depth to it. Until I met Blanche.
My friend Blanche was the sweetest and most gracious person in my friend group. She had endless curiosity and compassion, was frequently the first to lend a hand when I needed help, and always looked for people who were feeling a bit lost and in need of a friend. When I asked her about her name, she told me she hated it and wished she’d never picked it.
She’d learned Blanche means white, and felt it didn’t capture who she was and what she wanted to be. She told me if she could do it all over again, she would have rejected the suggestion of Blanche and instead claimed the name Joanna, meaning God has been gracious. She lit up every time she talked about it, but said she was waiting for the right time to change it.
Our last Christmas in Shanghai was also Blanche’s. Or at least the name Blanche. By the end of the night when we’d gathered with a group of local friends and straggling expats who didn’t head to their home countries for the holidays, she decided the Christmas gift she most wanted was her new name. She’s been Joanna for over five years now and the name suits her completely. She said no one ever accidentally called her Blanche after she made the change. The enthusiastic support was unequivocal.
Unfortunately, support is not always a given with a name change.
A casual friend’s daughter was named for a beloved aunt, who had secretly abused the daughter throughout her childhood. When the daughter got to high school, she told the school she wanted to be called another name, and the school obliged. I knew her for years by the name her mother called her, and when I discovered she was called something else in the rest of her circles, I asked the mom about it. She brushed off my question. When the daughter got married, she officially and legally changed both first and last name at the same time. I started calling her by the new name when I saw her.
The mom, who I saw far more often than the daughter, refused to use the new name. After all, she was the one who had named her daughter after an aunt she had loved dearly. But the daughter didn’t feel loved, she felt waves of pain every time someone called her the same name as her abuser. Her new name was special to her, highlighting how she was a survivor, not a victim. As the full story came out, I stood in solidarity with the daughter. The mother struggled to believe that someone she loved and admired had deeply hurt someone else she loved. She dismissed the name change as teenage rebellion that went too far. But she lost any chance of reconciliation when the daughter and her new husband moved away, far from the family. They went on to have two children which the mom never got to meet.
It’s fascinating to me that some name changes are acceptable and expected, some are completely unremarkable, and others cause confusion and pain. I’m not the only mama out there who carefully chose a name which tried to encapsulate the hopes and dreams I held for the new life we freshly welcomed into the world. What would happen if one of my sons completely rejected the name we thoughtfully bestowed on them at birth, the name we chose which is steeped in so much meaning? Might I become so lost in mourning a name that I might also lose a child? Yes there’s a proverb about a name being worth more than great riches, but what price could anyone ever put on having a deep, lifelong relationship with my child?
The Benjamin in the Hebrew Bible, youngest son of Jacob and inspiration for our own Ben’s name, never knew his mother Rachel because she died in childbirth.
As she labored to bring him into the world, she realized she would not live to see him grow into a man. Through her very last breaths, she gave him a name to reflect the dreams which would die with her: Ben Oni. It means son of my distress, or son of my sorrow.
We are told Rachel was very loved by Jacob, but she did not have an easy life and struggled mightily with infertility during a time in history when a woman’s entire worth and earthly purpose was tied up in her ability to bear children. To welcome a child, a son, sure to bring her the honor and esteem she lacked, only to find her life draining away is the greatest tragedy. I cannot find fault with Rachel for trying to memorialize this devastating situation by giving her son a name to reflect the distress of the moment.
In the death of his beloved wife, Jacob could have given into the deep grief and kept the name as a reminder of what he had lost, but he did not. He changed Ben Oni, son of my sorrow, to Benjamin, son of my right hand. And with that name change, the whole story shifted from memorializing the past to a blessing for the future. Jacob’s twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel, and though the tribe of Benjamin was the smallest, they were courageous and powerful.
Names have power. When someone shouts your name, you turn your head. When a parent says your full name, you know you’re in trouble. When a lover whispers it into your ear, you melt. When it’s called during graduation, you stand up tall and proud. When the name you are called doesn’t match who you are or what you know about yourself, it brings you shame.
My mother’s actual first name was Judith.
But if anyone called her that, oh WOW did they ever get an earful! She was always Judy. Even her own mother, who had previously given birth to my Uncle Jim, gave her the name without intention to ever call her Judith. It was always meant to be Jimmy and Judy. My mother changed her last name to Rose immediately after marrying my dad, but didn’t realize at that point she could have also changed her first name legally to Judy without paying or petitioning the court. It was her one big regret, which I heard about every time she got her driver’s license renewed or someone asked for her I.D. Despite all the angst it brought her, she never made any official move to change it later in life.
It pained me at her funeral to see all the printed matter naming her as Judith, and hearing the staff of the funeral home call her the same. They were working from her identification, but I knew if she was standing there among us, she would have let everyone know exactly how she felt about it. Knowing my fierce and fiery mother, it would not have been pretty. If I could somehow ask my mother just one more question, this probably wouldn’t rank in the top ten things I never got answers for that I wish I knew. But I remain deeply curious over the story behind her unwillingness to just take the steps necessary to replace that -ith with a -y. Because even though she openly despised the name, it was clearly something she was willing to live with.
When my mother died, she had been viciously robbed by the most brutal of thieves, Alzheimer's disease. My last moments with her were filled with the deepest of grief. I stood at the foot of her hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand, weeping with a broken heart over ugly conflicts within my extended family while my mother was slipping further and further away from us. I wailed in pain with my name for her, Mama.
Somewhere in the locked labyrinth of her mind, she recognized this special name of hers, and grew aware of her daughter’s distress. She was drawn out for the briefest of moments, wholly present with my husband and I. She spoke my name, the one she had given me, Beautiful Heather, why are you crying? Don’t cry, Heather. It’s okay.
My mother carried me within her and gave me life, which you might argue is the best gift. But hearing my name just one more time from the lips of the woman who first spoke it to me is surely the sweetest gift, one that will carry me all the rest of the days of my life.
Do you have a special story about your name? I’d love to hear it! Thanks for reading!
I’m crying so hard at the last bit. I can’t even compose an entire comment.
I have heard several stories about why I was named Cassandra - a friend of my mom's... a famous actress of the time...? But my mom also decided that my shortened name of Cassi would be unique and not have an E at the end. I have never been able to find my name on a key chain or other memento and that bothered me as a child but now I like being one of the few that have a name spelled like mine. So when I went to high school - how shocked was I that there were 3 Cassi's all with the spelling with no E! One was very popular, I was mid-range, and I never knew the third. When Facebook first became popular and old high school "friends" were searching each other out - there were a few times I had to say to people I think you are looking for the other Cassi. Another part of my naming was that I was given my father's initials - CR. He was Clifford Reuben and I am Cassandra Ruth. When I had a child I wanted to do the same and so my firstborn is Christopher Rey. Yes, Rey with an E - meaning King. So he is the Christ-bearing King. Had he been a girl - he would have had my husband's initials and most likely would have been Denise (middle name never decided on). When I had my second son (2nd marriage) I flipt it and wanted to give our son John's initials... but my brother Thomas had just died so he was given his name as his middle name. Thus my 2nd child is Jake Thomas. The funniest thing to me about their names has always been that everyone wants to shorten Christopher to Chris (he finally gave in and is now called that) but everyone wants to lengthen Jake's name to Jacob. Nope, he's just Jake.