Names

[azurelunatic]

votania was born, and was named the wrong thing by her mother.

From what she says, she's been looking for a name that fit ever since she was old enough to call herself by a name. She found a name that fit, and has gone by it, and, back when I first was getting to know her, got it legally changed. That's the only name I've ever known her by.

Unfortunately, her mother still called her by her legal name, or a diminutive thereof, despite her having preferred her own name ever since she found it. This drove her bats.

This changed, one day.

I have sleep issues. I need my sleep, and I ferociously guard the sleep of those I love. So when votania's mother called one day while she was finally getting the sleep that she needed (job, school, kid = no sleep), which happened to be while I was also taking a nap.

When I am jolted out of sleep, I wake up cross and groggy. The phone jolted me out of a much-needed nap. "Is [diminutive] there?" asked an unfamiliar voice.

My knee-jerk response, since I knew no one by that name, was, "Who?"

And then, of course, her mother got all pissy with me, thinking that I'd done this on purpose.

I got pissy right back, and told her that her insistence on calling her daughter by the diminutive of the name that she had never chosen, didn't like, and wasn't her, was rude and inexcuseable; where I came from, if someone was issued a birth-name that was not them, it was a mark of respect to them to call them by the name-form that they chose, and I did not tolerate people who did not respect my friends, and furthermore, your DAUGHTER was ASLEEP, so GOODBYE!



votania came wandering out of her room at about this point, as the ringing, and the subsequent yelling, had disturbed her rest. Ooops.

I was convinced to apologize for the tone of my correction. votania's mother started calling her "my daughter"/"my darling daughter" rather than use any name.

Some time later, at a family gathering, where Great-Aunt was making unhappy noise about votania's name change, I heard my exact words from votania's mother's mouth about respect for name changes. I recognized it, as I'd borrowed it from Uhura's Song....

---

From http://www.webster.com:

Main Entry: ²diminutive
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century
1 : indicating small size and sometimes the state or quality of being familiarly known, lovable, pitiable, or contemptible -- used of affixes (as -ette, -kin, -ling) and of words formed with them (as kitchenette, manikin, duckling), of clipped forms (as Jim), and of altered forms (as Peggy); compare AUGMENTATIVE

Comments

[redshoeson.livejournal.com]

I very much appreciate your description of your pissyness with her mom. ^_~

[azurelunatic]

Thanks.

Her mother will, in the long run, thank me for the incident.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

My mom still tends to use my old name, but I really don't care all that much anymore. I did for a while, but now it is just mildly weird - like "Hey, that's me isn't it?" Since I don't talk to my parents often (maybe once a month or so, if that) and I pretty much don't speak to anyone else from my past (all my grandparents are dead and I was never close to most of my aunts and uncles, and I don't have any friends that pre-date college) it is negligible.

[azurelunatic]

Ah.

I feel like I'm answering more and more to Azz versus my offline name, Joan.