Call Me by My Name: A Primer
The story of how I got the name Zina and all my other names.
A few weeks ago I drove up to the Frost Farm Conference with my grad school friend, Daniel Cooper. As a poet he goes by the name D. A. Cooper, which makes sense seeing as Daniel and Cooper are fairly common names. Another friend and Frost attendee, James McBride goes by J. E. McBride on Instagram, Substack, and elsewhere in order to avoid confusion with a much more well known James McBride.
With Daniel, James, and many others at the conference I got to have some really meaningful conversations, but it occurred to me afterward that at no time did I know the names of anyone other than the person speaking. I heard stories of kids, spouses, sisters, parents… but not once did anyone offer a name nor did I ask for one. Why? Because I think there is a social understanding that to know someone’s name is to be given a gift.
A name is a tool of semiotic orientation—a way of identifying someone as being special and distinct from others around them. It is also method of invocation—a way of calling for a particular being instead of another in this vast temporal experience.
Much like Rumpelstiltskin, I have been loathe over the years to give up my real name. However, family and friends who have never known me as Zina are finding me on social media and peppering my posts with comments, addressing me by sorts of things. Not only that but the University of St. Thomas’s technology platforms have outed my legal name to fellow graduate school classmates and professors.
My name situation is so confusing that even my own mother doesn’t even know what to write on my birthday card! Each year offers a clumsy address of slashes, dashes or parentheses.
Well, my friends, the jig is up.
I throw my hands up in surrender.
I’m giving you all my names, and I am letting you decide what to call me. But let it be known, each name identifies a sphere of community or level of intimacy. Just as there are rooms in a house you should not enter if you are only visiting, there are names that are probably left only to certain people.
Once, when my eldest son was very little, he was trying to call for me but as moments went by and I didn’t respond he just went through every name be knew me by: “Mama, mama, mama? Mommy…? Mom…? Zina…? Christine…? Babe…?” (That last name was what my husband calls me.) Eventually I was fetched, but the point is that even at a young age kids understand that people are called many things, but the nuances of names are harder to determine.
Christine
Christine Asuncion Gomez is the name I was given at birth. Christine was simply a name my parents liked, and Asuncion is the name of my paternal grandmother who died well before I was born.
I prefer that people who have known me for a long time, prior to when I turned 18, call me Christine.
Zina
When I got to college, some wiseacre at housing assignments thought it would be funny to put freshmen of very similar names in the same room, like John and Jonathan. Thus, my freshman year roommate was Christina. The confusion was immediate, and we quickly determined that one of us needed to change. Fortunately, when I was in high school theatre club, I was given a little used nickame: Zina. It was a combination of my name and zoí (ζωή), the Greek word for “life” which I think was very appropriate. In college I started a new life as an adult (technically), and I was rechristened Zina, a name which came to me by chance but also by choice.
I prefer that people who have known after the age of 18 until the present day, call me Zina. (With the following exceptions…)
Tin-Tin
Much like in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, where you have characters with Russian diminutives like Kitty (Ekaterina), Dolly (Darya), and Kostya (Konstantin), Filipinos have their diminutives. Sometimes Maria Teresa is shortened to Marites, Filomena to Nene, Junior to Jun… and Christine becomes Tin-Tin.
I am fine with any Filipino calling me Tin-Tin, Christine or Zina, but I prefer to be called Tita Tin-Tin1 within the Iskelahang Pilipino (Filipino School of Boston) community.
Christina
This is a fun one that I get, and you see why having a college roommate named Christina was problematic. This is not usually one of my names, but if I love you I will answer to it. It also seems to split the different between Christine and Zina. However, just know that if you call me Christina I will be looking over my shoulder to make sure you are not talking to someone else.
It is your call…
Notice that I said that in most cases I prefer to be called a name, but I certainly don’t demand it. Call me by whatever name you want. You can even give me a new nickname.
I think of a name as a window through which one is viewed. For example, I work with a lot of small children and when a toddler accidentally calls me “mama” I know that they have placed me in a realm of special caregiving. When one of my friends becomes a Catholic priest, I get to call him Father, which changes the dynamic between us.
Naming was the first gift of creation that God gave to Adam in the Book of Genesis. There is a power to it and a responsibility. When we name our children it becomes an essential part of who they are—until they become like me and attempt wrest control over their identities.
So given all of this… what will you call me?
And what do you want me to call you?
Which of my names do you prefer?
Do you prefer being called different names in different contexts?
Thank you for reading! As always, I would love for you so sign up for my Substack, but paid subscriptions help me pay for my tuition at the University of St. Thomas and any help you can offer is very much appreciated.
Tita means “auntie”
You'll always be Zina to me. But when you told me you were Christine before you were Zina, I felt honored and privileged to have been given the gift of your name. Especially since my own middle name is Christine.
Christine is of those names that is mine, but is so rarely used that I sometimes wonder why I have it. And yet when my parents call me Melanie Christine... I feel especially known and loved in a different way. That name really belongs to my childhood and to immediate family. It's not secret, but it is intimate.
Almost everyone just calls me Melanie. And that's my preference. I don't really love the nickname "Mel" because boys at school used to call me that in a way I didn't like. Also a manager at a job I disliked took it upon himself to call me Mel at our first meeting. It wasn't a nice thing. It felt like a power move and I hated it. But there is a small handful of people, mostly relatives and a few close friends, who can call me that shorter version of my name in a way that makes me feel loved and cherished and that doesn't grate at all.
Growing up my siblings and friends called me Di but when I became a registered nurse and worked in hospitals I couldn't answer the phone, "Di here" ! 🙄