What's In A Name? What's In My Name?

My Name
By Lynn Le

My name—it’s something people call me by. It’s better than being called “it” or just “she” or “you” or even “that kid”. It’s something that helps connect people in the way that if you say each other’s names, you know who the other person is, in a way. It’s something personal that has the power to create a bond when I first say, “My name is Lynn.”

My family is Vietnamese—foreign names sounded beautiful to them. So my parents gave me a foreign name—a simple, pretty one, a common one. I’ve known some people to call me “Lynn Le” as if it were my full name, because they thought it was, like a second name; like the name Mary would have Jane at the end of it sometimes.

I like to come up with nicknames for fun, even though I like my given name very much, and mostly my other names are pennames or based off of something I adore. I still wouldn’t give up my name, even if I keep creating nicknames. I can never settle on a nickname, so maybe that’s why I’ve kept my real name, instead of insisting people call me by a name I’ve only come up with.

My name seems to ring, like the sound a bell makes. It sounds like chimes ringing in the gentle winds of life. It’s relaxing, it’s simple, it’s unique to me; but at the same time, it can be the random, energetic, creative, lively monkey of the Chinese zodiac of the year I was born.

My name is the golden sunset and cool, dark evening, just after dusk when the skies are being sprinkled with stars and covered by a blanket of pale purple-blue, and it’s getting darker till twilight, when daybreak rules. It’s a blooming carnation in the middle of a grassy field in the lively air of spring and colors are just all about.

My name is a single ray of light piercing the storm clouds over the disturbed sea of life, and the raging tides are always changing, the once gentle winds whipping me hard as I continue to go and break the waves of time, to rest in the sea of my destiny.

Throughout it all, my name is always with me.

My name is simple. My name is common.

My name is mine.