Most people don’t choose their names, and I didn’t choose mine. My parents picked it for the melody of syllables in “Madelyn,” and I’ve lived with the misspellings and the “Oh, I know a Maddie!”’s ever since. I grew up with three neighbors and a best friend who shared my name.
My name has never defined me. Since it isn’t hard to pronounce, nobody’s had to work to learn it. Nobody has been fascinated with my name’s meaning or origin. Nobody’s heard my name and followed it up with “where were you born?” My name does not push the conversation to my history and life story, and in that way, I’m lucky: my name does not define me.
However, when I’m the third “Maddy” in a class, it offers a challenge. Why should I be the “Maddy” that people remember? I feel the need to justify my ownership of my name. Of course, my name doesn’t have any bearing on my value, but when given a standard, we hold people to it. Two people of the same name implies that one will always be better, that one will be the better remembered and the favorite.
I have to prove that I’m the “Maddy” worth remembering because when a person hears that name, there’s one face that will be their immediate association, and it’s the person who is their friend, their funny classmate, the kid who stands out somehow. To get into college here in the first place, to get in anywhere, we mastered the art of making our names powerful and of standing out from a stack of applications. We conditioned ourselves to be marketable and memorable. That conditioning doesn’t just disappear.
College is an amazing opportunity to feel anonymous. Coming in as a freshman to the wonderful world of NSO, you are just one of hundreds and hundreds of smart, talented, creative, and capable students.
You meet new person after new person and you become your name, where you’re from, what school you’re part of, and the fun fact you offer about yourself. You become nothing as soon as the group moves on to the next person and forgets everything about you.
Coming into college, it feels like my identity has been wiped clean, like I have to prove to every person I meet that I am worth knowing, worth talking to. I expect to be forgotten because I am bad at remembering.
That’s not meant to be pessimistic. It would be impossible to remember every person we meet, and it feels like a competition to make the biggest impression and last the longest time in someone’s consciousness. I guess on some level it’s evolutionary to want to be remembered, but more immediately, it’s the sense of validation I’m striving for.
I hear my name and think, “Yes. Out of all the people here, that is me.”
My name is one of the most fundamental labels I’ve carried through live, and upon arriving at Georgetown, it was one of the last people saw when they met me.
When I showed up here, I became a series of labels by which I could be quickly encoded: “female, brown hair, wears glasses.” I became something to be recognized, but not known. That is not unique to me. That is a process of college and of the world beyond. Our skills of facial recognition run on autopilot while names slip out the back door.
There is a vast emotional difference between giving the “hey there” nod across the quad to someone you remember to NSO and shouting, “Hey Sara!” I’ll take the nod because it’s, at least, a confirmation that my face hasn’t already slipped into the sea of anonymity that is the Georgetown undergraduate class, but with the name, I become a human being within it. A name takes you from being a piece of scenery to a character in the plot, but it doesn’t happen right away, and it doesn’t happen too often.
It’s mechanical, not maniacal, and at first, I didn’t notice it. I was forgetting names too; it’s just part of the process.
I came back to my dorm one night and walked into the common room. My floormates yelled hello to me by name. Out of nowhere, I wanted to cry. I didn’t because I am very cool and emotions in the first two weeks of school are #notcool, but I felt it.
With that recognition, I had the affirmation that I was a part of their lives. This dorm was somewhere people knew who I was and could prove it. In a very small way, I belonged here, and that is what we look for in these first few weeks: to belong.
With them, I’ve succeeded at some level. I am their Maddy, and when they hear that name, I might be one of their first associations. I take up a space in their lives, I don’t think there’s any better gift than a bit of space. I know when I hear “Claudia,” or “Timmy,” or “Dajah” or “Andy,” I think of them as well. Their personalities have colored those words and brought them to life. They are characters in my story just as I am a character in theirs.’
At the same time, I’m fine with people forgetting my name. I forget names. I’d be a hypocrite if I demanded that everyone prioritize mine because, as I said earlier, we only have so much space to fill with names, and how we fill that space is a mix of intention and coincidence. A name isn’t the only facet of my identity, in fact, it’s a pretty intimate one. A name as the recognition of an individual holds a lot of power. It is not something to throw around; it is an affirmation of a relationship.
Through nicknames and tones, we refine the way we address one another, but when we’re meeting and don’t have the background to joke, we are left with versions of formality. Our professors address us by the full names listed on the photo roster. We are our newest selves going by our oldest names, and out of all of that, we’re supposed to find identity.
It’s a lot to consider, but it’s also just a name. It’s a keyword meant to represent who we are and what we bring to the table. To reveal all shades and tones of my personality, I need time, but a name is instantaneous.
I didn’t choose my name, a lot of us don’t, but it’s still nice to hear.
Madelyn Rice is a freshman in the College.
