nameless
rise
Before you were you, this messy being that you are, you were a child. Hazily, woven from retellings and the barest thread of memory, fragments as close to reality as butterflies are to spiritual realms, do you remember naming yourself?
As a child, you had inadvertently changed your name. Wielding that magical pencil, you scrawled out the characters [ ]1 instead of [ ] and accepted no criticism. It was right. And it was yours. It was you.
Arise, child, and be, your name said. So you were.
[ ] is not suited for casual use. You cannot bear to let your name be mangled by the toneless imitation of English. 小名 is meant for family anyway. Family. Whatever, whoever that may be.
Now, no matter how hard you reach for that approval of knowing, that quiet, solid feeling of right, there is nothing. Perhaps you’ve already exhausted your store of the world’s magic.
seconds
On your fifth frosty exhale of Winter's air, you were gifted a name in your mother tongue. An afterthought of another’s. Someone else’s dream and fantasy. [xiao yv] Perhaps five people have called you by that name.
[xiao] is for [xiao sa]. It’s not exactly feminine but common in names for girls. Attributed to coolness, elegance. Does it fit you? You’re not sure.
[yv] is half the name of a king, missing the fire radical that implies masculinity. Had you been born a proper son, one to pass down the family name you would have been gifted this king’s legacy. You must make do without your fire. After all, you are not a worthy heir.
You’ve never quite understood the appeal of a family name. It ties you to a sea of others by this intangible connection called blood, yet it guarantees nothing, not love, understanding, nor support. So be it. Let this be the end of your branch of the family.
Is this afterthought of a name truly yours? Its absence on your legal documents makes you question whether it holds equal value to your nicknames. If someone used it to call for you, you doubt you’d even remember to turn around.
You drift further and further from your first language. Once familiar words surface hazily. Which particle goes with which nouns? Are you reading half a word or the whole thing? Can you remember what it means?
little devil
English, this language of thorns, too familiar to your tortured tongue, holds no hidden petals of beauty. Letter combinations fall from your lips, each missing something.
You can’t understand how others fit in their names like a second skin. Whoever they call out [ ] to is a stranger, an illusion, someone else’s child. Never you.
They don’t see you. They don’t know you.
You want a simple name, one that rings quietly. You want to sculpt this name and let it resonate into the world solely for you. But nothing fits.
Your little devil haunts your dreams, begs you to whisper it into the world. Call me, it cries. Call me and become me.
But your voice shakes, and it gets smothered in your throat. Will it truly be yours? Only within the harbor of your mind is it safe. Would it not be better to leave it there, sheltered from cruel storms?
It would only take one careless burst of sound to ruin that theoretical perfection.
tossing
Catching fleeting names is like chasing dreams, completely up to the flighty whims of fate. Of the choices that drop into your hands, you wonder, how many are usable?
Your standards are low: nice signature, two syllables, contains the letter Z, not commonly used, and best if unique. If it were some mystical recipe for a spell, perhaps it would at most be used in a textbook for novices.
Why, then, is finding something that fits so arduous a task?
You’ve been stuck at name pending for so many years now. Isn’t it about time that one drops into your hands? Instead, littered around you is a graveyard of failures and forgeries.
You stand in a sea of strangers who are formed from wisps of carelessly traded phonemes. Some, like the one where [s]2 was traded for [ʃ] could pass for anyone, while others, like [o] for [u] are ghostly, swirling amalgamations of barely coalesced pieces. More materialize at every ghastly self introduction and roll call.
favors
Still, you keep a placard for nicknames, titles and expressions of adoration. After all, if others flail while offering words in increasingly painful attempts to categorize and call upon you, you might as well give them a repertoire of the fun variety.
You respond to most titles of nobility.
Your distinguished eminence, your highness, your lordship, anything with respect and kindness will you deign with a response. More simply, you have my friend, comrade, lord, this one, affirmations that flow off the tongue with sincerity.
Favor must be returned with favor. For those who gift you their hearts, you respond with yours. [ ] and [ ], [ ] and [ ], become a vessel for your friendships. Its composition is a beautiful mix of you and them.
Incompleteness, freezing and empty, shatters your temporary haven. What would a passerby know of the warmth you’ve shared with others? You stumble through what a stranger could use to call upon you. What calling card do you need when you can simply wander?
What you’ve settled on is a bandage, a compromise between the emptiness of a nameless entity and the spark of something new. Z. A start. But not enough.
nameless
Besides the ever-looming giant of legalities and society, is there any reason to tie yourself to the devilish existence of names?
Why tie yourself to a name at all? What purpose does it serve? Cursing others? Sorting differences?
A gift and curse from others, is that not all a name is? Donning and tossing ill-fitting names becomes a cyclical chore. At some point, you think you could shackle yourself to one. Maybe. But if you’re forced to choose, you might as well pick a name that you gift yourself.
Yet, true names are magical phenomena. Stories are told of winged fae and cunning mages whose powers are tied to their names. There is a mystique to this folklore. Perhaps it’s the allure of something inherently yours. Or perhaps it’s the appeal of entrusting someone to hold it with care.
Still, something remains missing. Meditation and makeshift spells do not bring you any closer to the fleeting fantasy of a true name. Even this hope of a name is dashed, for hope is for those who know its true name and can summon it from the dark.
You don’t need a name. You can just be. Can’t you?
1 A note about brackets: In general, empty brackets denote something that can be supplied with the sound “daeng.” The content inside is some name or part of one and has been censored. It’s the flavor of potential, incompleteness, and space to be.
2 IPA Chart with Sounds | International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds
Z Luo (no pronouns) is a staff writer for juxtapose magazine.
Z is a student at USC who enjoys writing and reading, wordplay and genrebending, languages, anime, tossing words into the air for the price of raindrops, poetry, and, of course, run-on sentences.
