Here’s an exercise from the book. It’s a very basic exercise on the surface, but I love how she expounds on it. It’s about picking or imagining a new name — something that’s always resonated with me because I really don’t care for my name. It’s never felt like me. (Didn’t help that I was frequently called a boy’s name — actually, a completely different name — as a nickname when I was growing up.) My middle name is slightly better, but still, just kind of eh for me. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I sometimes still fantasize about changing it. Whether you really change your name or just play around with it, I think it’s worth considering. What does your name say about you? What would you like it to say?
Anyway, here’s what she has to say about it. There’s a whole bit here about Mozart’s name that’s fascinating to me.
Pick A New Name
Imagine you could change your name. What would you choose? Would it be a name that sounded good or belonged to someone you admire? Would it make a statement about what you believe or how you want the world to approach you? What would you want it to say about you?
This is not just an exercise in “what if.” It’s about identity — who you are and who you aim to be.
I’ve always thought my creative life began the moment my mother named me Twyla. It’s an unusual name, especially when you combine it with Tharp. (Twyla Smith just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?) My mother had seen the name “Twila” in a clipping about the queen of a hog-calling contest in Indiana, and as she explained it, “I changed the i to a y because I thought it would look better on a marquee.” She had big plans for me. She wanted me to be singular, so she gave me a singular name.
If it’s a parent’s job to make children feel special, then my mother did her job well. To me, the name is fierce, independent, and unassailable. It can’t be shortened to Twy or La, and it doesn’t take a diminutive well. (I have a good friend who always adds an affectionate Yiddish “leh” to names, but Twylaleh is too much even for him.) It’s a good name to have if you want to leave your mark in the world.
More than anything, though, my name is original. It makes me strive for originality — if only to live up to the name.
I am not exaggerating the magic and power invested in our names. Names are often a repository of a kind of genetic memory. Parents, who are the arbiters of all given names, certainly feel the power; that’s why they name their children after ancestors (or themselves). They honor those who came before while connecting their child with his or her past. The hope is that not only will some of our forebears’ genes pass down with the name, but also their courage, their talents, their drive, and their luck.
The essayist Joseph Epstein has noted, “A radical change in one’s name seems in most cases a betrayal — of one’s birthright, of one’s group, of one’s identity.” I don’t agree. In a sense it’s a commitment to a higher personal calling. And it’s not uncommon among creative souls.
The ancient masters of Japanese art were allowed to change their name once in their lifetime. They had to be very selective about the moment in their career when they did so. They would stick with their given name until they felt they had become the artist they aspired to be; at that point, they were allowed to change their name. For the rest of their life, they could work under the new name at the height of their powers. The name change was a sign of artistic maturity.
Mozart played with variations on his name for most of his life. He was baptized Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. His father Leopold referred to him shortly after his birth as Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb. The young Mozart generally referred to himself with the middle name Amade (Gottlieb, Theophilus, and Amadeus being German, Greek, and Latin, respectively, for “lover of God). But he made a significant change at the time of his marriage to Constanze Weber: In all documents related to the marriage (except for the marriage contract itself), his name is given as “Wolfgang Adam Mozart.” By taking the name of the first man, Mozart may have been declaring himself reborn, set free from the past. “Mozart’s constant alterations of his name are his way of experimenting with different identities,” wrote Mozart biographer Maynard Solomon, “trying to tune them to his satisfaction.”
Done wisely and well, a change of name can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Epstein points out, “Eric Blair, Cicily Fairfield, and Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski became, respectively, George Orwell, Rebecca West, and Joseph Conrad — the first to shuck of the social class into which he was born, the second to name herself after a feminist heroine in Ibsen, the last to simplify his name for an English audience. Yet how right those names now seem, how completely their owners have taken possession of them!”