When I was born my parents named me Marilynn Renée Cohn. My mother was particular about the two “n’s” in the first and my father had strong feelings about the accent in the second. They intended to call me Lindy, probably, but about five years later brother Steve made it Mar (that’s with the “a” of apple, at least in New York – Californians tended to say it Mare).

The Cohn was really Horan, bureaucratically changed at Ellis Island. And my first two names were for my maternal grandmother and her mother, Molly and Rose. So I was given the Jewish names “Mayta Razel” (long “a’s” in those first syllables). Marilynn Renée Mayta Razel Cohn Horan.

But it turned out that Mayta and Razel were actually Yiddish and not Hebrew, and of course Molly and Rose were dead or I couldn’t have been named for them, so after a bit of asking around it was decided that my Hebrew names were Molka Rack-hel (“Raquel” but with a hard “ch”). Marilynn Renée Mayta Razel Molka Rachel Cohn Horan.

When I was 22 I married Nick and acquired his last name. He went by Krause, but his family name was actually Merrill (his father had taken a beloved stepdad’s Krause). We decided not to hyphenate; we could see that getting silly in a generation or two. I took his name and he took Judaism. Marilynn Renée Mayta Razel Molka Rachel Cohn Horan Krause Merrill.

I could go on but I won’t. I have a lot of names and, really, I think none of them fits. But I figure I’d get sick of any I picked, too. For the same reason that I never wrote my marriage vows, I’ll stick with what I was given and complain about it.

What’s in a name? Probably a lot. The first thing Adam did after getting created was to name creatures. Ursula Le Guin proposes that one can perform real magic if one knows the recipient’s true name.

Oh well.