Sometimes words don’t sit quite right in your mouth. Cacophony. Guffaw. Clunky. That’s fine—it’s easy enough to avoid using them in writing or conversation. They don’t regularly come up in your day to day life. People don’t say, “There was a cacophony of sound coming from the train station.” They say, “Christ, they’re loud.” They turn up the volume on their phones. So you don’t use the word cacophony. I don’t use the word cacophony.
Sometimes words don’t sit quite right in your mouth. Sometimes, you need to say them anyway.
The New York Civil Court in Jamaica, Queens, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. My brothers and I decided, after much debate and many reschedulings, that on a Wednesday we’d all agreed on, we’d go down there and change our last name.
Some words don’t sit quite right in your mouth. Our last name didn’t sit quite right in our mouths, and as it turns out, it doesn’t sit quite right in many other people’s mouths either. It’s good to know we’re not alone.
To legally change one’s last name, you have to fill out a petition stating the reason you want to change your name, bring in documents upon documents that confirm your identity, and pay a $65 fee. After that, your petition is filed and delivered to a judge, who will then decide whether or not he wants to grant you permission to change your name. The clerk we talked to said to wait four months before calling to check in on the status of our case.
There wasn’t much fanfare when I called. The clerk said that the judge approved of the petition, and we could come down whenever we were able to buy copies of the court order stating our name change. So we went in, bought our copies, and then we left. The name I carried for 19 years, erased in less than 30 minutes.
When I was younger, it was my first name that gave me trouble. Fariza is not a name you often hear, and I used to have some trouble with my r’s, so pronouncing my own name was a struggle in itself. I was born in 1997, right around the time the Japanese TV show “Dragonball Z” wedged its way into popularity in the United States, so when I got older, people my age likened one of the villain’s name, Frieza, to mine. When I got a bit older, my mother told me that Fariza wasn’t even supposed to be my name. The nurse heard wrong and added an imaginary R that wasn’t supposed to be there. Faiza. Imagine that. I can’t imagine it.
None of this matters. Fariza is mine. I own it, and I refuse to give it up. My first name is my identity. My last name is a religion. It’s assumptions and stereotypes. It’s a political debate. It’s an aspect of my life that I wish I could take comfort in, but all I feel is discomfort.
Do you know what it’s like to live two lives? I was part of something once, a community much larger than the three-man army I’ve tied myself to now. People tell me it was about love, my first life, but my first life was not something I loved.
Names have power and I know this because mine gently pushed me into the ground until the only thing people could see was the red on my face. Names have power but mine whittled away so quickly I don’t remember what it was like to own it. To wear it proudly. To say my name without watching for a reaction. When I said my name aloud a piece of me bled—a knife in a wound that was stabbed so often the pain was expected. When I read it, it looked ugly. When I heard it, I raised my hand. I said “here” quicker than they were able to finish it. I tried not to cringe. I thought this was my burden to bear forever, so when the decision came to lift it, to free my stomach from the anvil that sat upon it, I jumped at the chance. I did my best to remove the 19 years I spent silently hating myself for it. I began anew.
Do you know what it’s like to say your name without fear? Something so simple, so minuscule as the act of introducing yourself brings me a sigh of relief. I say my name now as a breath. I say it strongly. I say it tinted with everything other than sadness, other than lonesomeness. I say my name with love in my voice now, when before I said it with meekness.
Sometimes words don’t sit quite right in your mouth. My last name has always sounded clunky. It was never just a word. Everyone has baggage, but mine slips off the tongue and is immediately selected for a “random” security check.
So we got our last name changed. I’m still getting all the paperwork organized, erasing the physical evidence of who I used to be. My father thought it was a betrayal; my mother was quietly happy that we took her last name instead. My brothers wanted a fresh start.
I just wanted to be able to say my name again.
