name
Statue of a young satyr wearing a theater mask of Silenos, ca 1st c CE. Photographed at the Art Institute of Chicago by the author.
Juliet:
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.Romeo:
I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.from William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
‘Romeo! Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Translation: Desperate! Desperate! I am really desperate! Are there any stalkers on my property?
I think you’re 14, and you’re an idiot. You took a roofie from a priest. Look at your life. Look at your choices.
Indeed, Juliet, what is in a name? Juliet dismisses its value - to her, it’s just an obstacle, an artificial hindrance to true love. Kids say the darndest things, am I right? This lovely and oft’ quoted interaction from Shakespeare’s famous tragedy points to the naiveté of young love - like most teenagers, Jules and RoRo (due in no small part to the limited development of their amygdalas and corresponding emotional maturity) have a hard time seeing beyond the edge of their, well, I’ll just say ‘noses.’ They lacked awareness of, among other things, the trauma they inherited in their bones from generations of tribalism and enmity. And Jules, Jules, Jules...a name is so much more than a thin veneer that can be so easily doffed.
A name carries a story. Sometimes, it’s a story worth telling. Sometimes, the story is a hoot, but, sometimes, it’s more of a holler. Not like, hollaaaaaa but, like, What the fuck?! When I was born (legend has it), my parents named me David William Hulseman, but before the birth certificate could be completed, my grandmother objected. “You can’t call him David Hulseman - people will think he’s Jewish.” This wasn’t just a demonstration of irrational prejudice - it was an irrational prejudice rooted in experience. As a young couple searching for a home to shelter their rapidly expanding brood, my parents were denied entry to houses for sale in a particular town because the sellers or the realtors assumed their surname was Jewish. I wouldn’t have described my parents as actively antisemitic, but this misidentification sure wasn’t worn as a badge of honor.
As I approached the sacrament of Confirmation in the Catholic Church, I chose the name Maximilian, in honor of the Polish Franciscan priest Maximilian Kolbe. He was canonized as a martyr - Kolbe died in Auschwitz after he offered his life in place of a Jewish prisoner whose number had been called for execution. To young-me, Kolbe was the ultimate symbol of building bridges between Catholics and Jews, but then college-aged-me discovered that Kolbe was a pretty rabid antisemite who landed in the concentration camps not because of his concern for persecuted minorities but as part of a round-up of priests and nuns in retaliation for a Church official’s criticism of the Nazis.
When I started teaching about Judaism, I got the question from at least one student each year: “Wait, Mr. Hulseman...are you Jewish?” If not, they always reasoned, why would I know so much about it? Because of the presence of both a chanukiah and a Christmas tree in the house, the woman who cleaned our home left a Christmas card for my now-ex and a Chanukah card for me. In the past few years, though no one has ever asked me to lead a celebration for Easter or any other observance in my own tradition, a friend who is Jewish has invited me to co-lead her Passover seder. What was a derogation for my parents is, for me, both a mark of pride and a reminder that there’s still plenty of work to do to get people to understand and respect difference.
A name reveals and shapes relationships. Sometimes my mom called me “Double Digit” (I was #10 among my siblings). Occasionally, she’d sing a few bars from Show Boat, like it was my theme song. “Just my Bill, an ordinary guy...” I hadn’t paid attention to the rest of the lyrics until I saw a revival of the musical when I was in college - it’s less of a doting love song about someone named Bill and more of a list of his deficiencies. To my peers, I was Billy until high school, when I dropped the y in an effort to sound more grown up. Today, only three people can get away with calling me Billy - hearing it from anyone else is deeply, deeply triggering.
My housemates in college called me Dussel (itself a diminutive of Dusseldorf, because so many people mispronounced my last name as Husselman which sounded, to them, like the name of the German city), and once I shocked an entire Senior class when I clarified that my name was not, in fact, Kyle Husselman. A friend from grad school magnifies her Southern accent and adds a syllable or two to greet me as Bee-ill. As a teacher and administrator, students called me Mr. Hulseman (it took about three months to stop looking for my father when I heard it). People I’ve never met know me as dussel76 on Instagram. For me, each is a moniker that indicates a level of intimacy or facets of me - the professional self, the personal self, the childhood self I’ve tried and tried to leave behind - and a reminder that each person knows me in a different way.
A name facilitates the reconstruction of identity. When I was in college, a fledgling group formed on campus to advocate for queer students. Terminology for gender and sexual orientation was pretty primitive in the 90s - the majority of people on campus knew “straight,” “gay,” and “lesbian” and expected everyone to fall neatly into one of the three categories. The group adopted the acronym SAYSO (“Students accepting your sexual orientation”), indicating that the cause provided an identity rooted in a particular value or disposition. I always found it curious and clever but also kinda clunky. It required explanation and reinforced the reality that, while some students accepted you, others didn’t. When I was introduced to the idea of “internalized homophobia,” the group’s name was the example that jumped to the fore. We adopted a name that dripped with pain. Queer in the 90s, right?
In recent years, the conventional initialism to denote non-heterosexual and non-cisgender people has evolved, shadowing the evolving understanding of how gender and sexual orientation intersect with other layers of identity. Some of this evolution is enshrined in the roster of queer organizations - GLSEN was the “Gay and Lesbian Student Educators Network,” and GLAAD referred to “Gay and Lesbian Advocates And Defenders,” but as “the community” expanded (the collection of folx who experience discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation...which, for the record, are two very different facets of personhood) so did the scope of these organizations’ work. The brand names survived, though their letters’ referents changed. We went from Gay & Lesbian to GLB (when bisexuality was recognized as a legitimate category by the Gs and the Ls) to LGB (in a feminist nod to the displacement of women) to LGBT (when recognition that gender was far more diverse than the old categories of male and female) to LGBTQIA+ (and various other initialisms that continue to chase after radical inclusivity and invite others who experience similar forms of marginalization into the fold). Those letters tell their own story, don’t they? But even more profoundly, each tweak of the name opened another mirror in which people could see themselves (sometimes finally) as part of a group, as welcomed members of a community.
In the past year, we’ve seen the rapid shift from POC (People Of Color), which identified non-white people who share the experience of racial discrimination, to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) in a deliberate recognition of the unique experiences of Black and Indigenous people that have recently (and finally) made it to the headlines that shape our national consciousness. While it provides a more nuanced description of the experiences people share, it’s also an indicator of where someone is in the conversation. Hearing (mostly white) people stumble over the grammar for, integration of, and pronunciation of BIPOC is at once hilarious and depressing. Depressing? Yeah, because it usually indicates that they’re more concerned with “saying the right thing” than reframing how they see the world.
In The Book of Blessings, Marcia Falk adapted a text by the Yiddish poet Zelda as a kaddish, a prayer recited in memory of the dead that is included in every traditional Jewish service. The traditional Aramaic text of the kaddish celebrates the name of God - not unlike the theology behind Catholic funerals, the prayer invites us out of dwelling in grief and into wonder at life, at creation. Falk steps away from the ancient iteration in favor of a more modern, even postmodern recognition of the experiences that shape us, the layers of creation and living that form us. “Each of us has a name,” the poem tells us - each of us has many names that point to people, places, things, events, relationships, the good stuff and the bad. Some names carry embarrassment or pain, others joy and nostalgia, but each gives us and others a starting point to recognize, to know, to nurture, and to delight in the experiences and relationships that shape us. So no, Juliet, don’t ask Romeo to doff his name (any of his names). Embrace it, call him by it, because truly loving people requires recognition of their full, complex, and many-layered selves.
