Names are important to us. They help to define who we are, not only for us but for those around us. For the same reason that one would find calling a ‘rose’ a ‘violet’ hard to accept, changing one’s name is often met with great resistance.

I speak from experience. When I was born, my parents named me ‘Chaitanya’, which comes from Sanskrit and may be translated as ‘consciousness’ or ‘cognizance’. I think that’s kind of cool, but when I was 5, my parents were concerned that they had made a mistake and gave me a more normal name, ‘Stephen’. As I began to discover who I was at the typical age of 20, I thought perhaps the previous name was more fitting. I realized that if I shortened it to ‘Chay’, it would sound kind of cool. At that time I was also beginning to study Spanish, so I was exposed to Ché Guevara. Ché is actually a casual way of addressing someone in Argentina.

I realized before actually going through with the change that it would be permanent, for the people who met me as Chay would know me by no other name. I also realized that people who knew me as Steve would drag their feet on the issue. So, I wavered.

I finally decided to do it when I was 22 and getting ready to go to Spain on a study abroad trip. Everyone there would be completely new, so they wouldn’t know any better and I would have three full months of being called by the name and responding to it so that it would sink in as my identity. It worked, and now it’s who I am.

So, to conclude, names aren’t something that we have complete control over. In fact, I would argue that the world around us has much more control over our own name than we do. We have no choice as to what we are called, indeed we have not the mental faculty to even make such a decision until it’s already too late. And just as a rose isn’t known by any other name, neither are we. Unless, of course, we give the same concerted effort to change our name that we would afford to any other important life change.