What's in a name?

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet....

When I was about 9 or so, I went around signing everything with my full name. However, since at the time I considered my full name to be N M Ke. Sp. Re. Pa., this could be a bit time and space consuming.

Before I was born, my parents didn't know what gender I would be, and so they made a deal. If I was a boy, my mother would pick my first name, my father would pick my middle name, and I would have my father's last name. If I was a girl, my father would pick my first name, my mother would pick my middle name, and I would get my mother's last name.
My father picked N, and later named my brother I, in honor of our great great great grandparents, N and I Sp. My mother named me M for her sister, and because it's one of the two family names for girls on that side of the family. ( I'm named for M, who was named for her aunt M, who was named for her mother M, and so on. The other family name for girls is Ann. Boys have Thomas.) K was my mother's last name.
Then things got complicated. My mother remarried and changed her name, and we moved south, where the fact that I didn't have my step-father's name, let alone my father's name, was truly bizarre and resulted in lots and lots of social issues as far as being the child of unwed hippie parents.

It also resulted in an identity crisis. Who was I? Nobody in my family had my name anymore. My dad and brother were Sp, my step-mother was Read, my mother and step-father and sister were Palmer. So, because I was an OCD little child who was obsessed with fairness, I took everyone's name, and always made sure to use them in appropriate chronological order of appearance of the people in my life. (yes, this says entertaining things about my willingness to subsume my identity to others in order to please them. psycho analysis can go fuck itself. it's beside the point for the moment.)

At some point, I don't remember when, but probably in junior high, I stopped messing with it and went back to just N K. My best friend and I developed lots of code names for ourselves and for the boys we liked for note-passing security, but I think the first real pen-name/alter ego I ever developed was Aine Aune, which a few of you may know as my email address. It was in the year or so before I moved to Ireland, and I wanted to know what N was in Gaelic. Answer- Aine. Or, more accurately, N is a form of Ann, and Ann in Gaelic is Aine (pronounced Ahn-yah). I thought it was supercool that Aine was so close to my Norwegian great grandmother's maiden name, Aune (ow-nee), so I combined them. So really, that alias is my name. In a manner of speaking.

The next real pen name I began using I picked while I was in Ireland, and have mostly retired, though I bring it out from time to time. It started when I saw this video (lyrics here), and fell in love with the name Josephine. I thought Josephine needed a good solid British last name to go with it, and so I became Josephine Elliott.

Josephine was my go-to name for a few years, and then I met K. We were 18, and one of the things we used to like to do was to sit around and tell each other stories about what we were going to be/do when we grew up. They inevitably involved lots of money, fast cars, and secret identities, and so we became Nigel Bores, which I think K had used for a little while already, and Eleanore Etoile. It seemed suitably glamorous enough for all the state balls and international jewel heists in which we would engaging. At some point I added an E to the middle, and became Eleanore E. Etoile, because I like using middle initials. It sounds more distinguished somehow.

Eleanore never existed as anyone other than a fantasy character, which I'm sure she's happy with. She's out there somewhere dancing a waltz in a gorgeous crimson ball gown and dripping in stolen jewels, and that's probably where she needs to stay.

It was around this time that I became serious about being a solitary practitioner. I do consider myself fam-trad, for reasons I'll get into in another post someday, and I had played along with a series of Pagan roommates when I was 16 and 17, but the summer I was 18 I started really beginning to read up on what being a solitary meant, and starting the process of realizing myself as a witch. During this process, I decided to take a Craft name. It was an idea I was familiar with, mainly from the various Pagan roommates, but not one I had thought much about. Me being me, this was a long process, involving several books of names, and many lists of names that I liked and names that I thought suited me and names that embodied qualities that I wanted to associate with myself and so on.

In the end, I decided on Thora. It was Norse, which I liked. I find it important to me to have names that reflect my heritages. It also is associated with Thor, who I like, and who I've always had an affinity for. I adore rain, and thunderstorms, so it seemed a good fit. Also I like that it is actually a name. It's not especially common, but I think that because of my shyer nature I more comfortable introducing myself as something that is an actual name ( no offense to Silver Ravenwolf). I think it takes a certain confidence to take a name that is obviously Pagan, which I didn't have when I was selecting names. In any case, I'm still very pleased with it.

I also selected two middle names, which I generally keep to myself. The first is Celtic, Irish specifically, though I'm sure there are other Celtic forms of it, and it means "dreamer". I have always dreamed almost every night, and very vividly, and I learn a lot from my dreams. I wasn't sure about picking it, because I have mixed feelings about inviting anything more from that realm of my life, but I decided that there is power in naming strong aspects of yourself, and that it helps you to know and control them.

The second is a Hebrew name, which I think is somewhat unusual in Pagan circles. I picked it first because it means "rose", which is what I always said I would change my name to as a kid. It's my favorite flower, and full of symbolism. In fact, I was almost named Rose. My mother had wanted to name me Rosa Carolina, which is the botanical name of the wild prairie rose (she's a botanist), but it was not her choice. Also, I liked the Hebrew as a nod to my Judeo-Christian roots. Interestingly, it was after I picked this name that I both began to study Hebrew and that I learned that I am part Ashkenazi Jew.

Lastly I picked the last name of Appelgren. It's also Norse, and goes well with Thora. But the main reason I picked it is because it was the maiden name of my thrice great grandmother, who was reputed far and wide for her psychic abilities. Her name was Big Marie, both because of her large size and because of her large appetites. She was, apparently, a woman to be reckoned with. It is through her descendants that the family talent for all things sixth sense, and tarot in particular, come cropping up generation after generation. So I took it in homage to her. It also didn't hurt that it means "apple garden", and apples have huge symbolic meaning throughout Pagan and Christian culture. From Eve to Avalon, they are omnipresent.

So, Thora (dreamer rose) Appelgren has been my name now for a good eight years. I still like it. I think it has served me very well.

The only change I have made to it is that K and I recently decided that we would like to have a Pagan family name. Since neither of us took the other's name when we married, it seemed like it might be nice to pick a name we could share. So we recently settled on Drakos, which is Greek for "dragon". Dragons have always been a fascination for us both from childhood on. When I was very small, "dragon" was my father's nickname for me. I had kids book about dragons that were wonderful, drew dragons, had dragon statues, and so on. K was equally fascinated, and it was one of our first things that we knew we had in common, because he wore a dragon necklace and I wore a dragon ring. Thus, when we began to talk about what would be a good "family name", it seemed pretty obvious.

Interestingly, this ties into the last alibi that I use, Thora Grey. My favorite tea is Lady Grey, and when I decided I wanted a dedicated pagan email account, I still wasn't sure how much I wanted to keep my name private, so I made it Lady Thora E. Grey. (the E is a remnant from Eleanore, and stands for Elizabeth, because Elizabeth I is one of my heroes). In any case, since I am (sometimes) Thora Grey, and K is Kian Dubh (which means black), that means we are the black and grey dragons. wahahahahah!

So you see, it's all interconnected. The universality of the expressions of the self blah blah blah.
Tea, jewel heists, and venerable ancestors.
All me.
:)