A Rose By Any Other Name...

What is a name? Who decides what your real name is?

My parents gave me a name. I’m not overly fond of it, but I wonder sometimes if it is because I am not confident in who I am. I shortened it into a more ambiguous title, and felt a bit better, most of the people in my life refer to me by that name.

It would be generous to say that perhaps 3,000 people know me by my name, it’s a unique name, and I’ve lived many places. I’m the girl in high school everyone remembers, because of my name.

But it would be stingy to claim that less than 50,000 people know me by the name I gave myself in my other writings. The Internet is a beautiful creation, allowing the common man to express himself in multitude of ways.

What began on a lark, a nomenclature created from the combination of one of my tattoos and the story of my soul, exploded into a place where people gathered. Praise and critiques thrown out equally, words of acclamation and loathing from a crowd assembling to read what I wrote.

Only two of them know my name, the name my mother and father bestowed upon me at my birth.

If the name I gave myself carries more weight, if it identifies me to a world that waits in wonder to read my writing, or at times waits with a cruel sense of purpose to rip my writing to shreds.

Does it then become my name?

What about my children? Is my real name simply ‘Mommy’ or the more oft used ‘M-O-M’, hollered from the backyard and usually followed by “can you bring me a popsicle?”

I like to think my real name, my true name, is the one that will be used throughout eternity. I’m simply convinced that we will have some unique designation upon reaching heaven. The sheer number of Adam Smiths coming through the Pearly Gates alone requires a method of distinguishing between each man and woman.

If heaven’s listening – if possible, may I keep my Internet name? I’ve found, kind sirs, that I’m rather fond of it.

~Lone Butterfly )i(