[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Rae Earley, 17, of Burlington writes about her decision to rename herself and why she thinks her new name suits her better than her original name, Grace.
Names
By Rae Earley
[W]hat’s in a name? Your identity, what ties you to your family, and yourself. For as long as I can remember, I have been dissatisfied with my own name. It’s too religious and its adjective, it’s just not me. Names are supposed to be defining of you. They should feel good when someone calls your name and they should define you. My name is way too delicate, too dainty for the kind of person I am. I do not want to be seen as someone who is careful and tidy and neat. For as long as I can remember, I have been the neighborhood tomboy, the person who has skydiving on her bucket list and loves zip lining at ArborTrek.
For a while, I tried to find a new name, and I realized that if you shorten my name, you get the boy name Ace. I thought that would be a better name, but my mom disagreed. She kept pointing out the Ace bandage while I was thinking of it as just a name. But of course, every name has a meaning. Ace is also a verb; to ace something, to be good at something. The pressure was a little too much. So I discarded that thought and randomly began to jumble the letters of my name to find something else. That’s where I came up with one of my favorite names: Rae. Whether you spell it Rey, Ray, Rae or Ré, I don’t care. I love that name and it’s a unisex name. I tend to like unisex names more for some reason.
Every time I have tried to change my name or at least go by a nickname, it just doesn’t sound right. People have been calling me my name for 17 years. It took them forever to stop calling me Gracie. Now suddenly I’m expecting them to call me Rae? A completely different name, even though it sounds very much like Grace? My senior seminar teacher said that he wants to get our names right, and if it is pronounced differently or spelled differently, he wants to respect that because it is our names. I’m not sure my folks think the same way. Almost everyone in my family who is younger than I am (I’m the oldest in my family) has a name that can be shortened to a common nickname. But they do not go by those easier names; instead they go by their three-to-four syllable names.
Everyone in my family seems content with their names. But a handful of my friends have changed and/or shortened their names to something else, either a nickname or a completely different name. I want to go by a new name, but I don’t think even I will be able to accept the change because a name is so much more than just a few letters jumbled together.
You are hardwired to react to your name, whether it be the name you go by or not. It’s strange if your nickname is a completely different name than the one you already own. I want to be called what I want to be called, and yes, it might feel weird at first, but what new thing doesn’t feel weird at first?
Yes, I’ll go by Rae now. I want to go by Rae now, and I hope that I don’t get ridiculed by my decision.
