My name was once something I was ashamed of. I was raised on Disney princesses with names that were more exciting and more interesting and prettier than mine. Names like Jasmine, Tiana, Esmeralda, Belle. My mother used to say that they almost named me Natasha, and I would get so upset because I absolutely adore the name Natasha and I wanted it to be my name. When I was younger, I wanted to go by my middle name, Angelina (mostly because I watched Angelina Ballerina RELIGIOUSLY. Even back then, I was such a fangirl.) But for some reason, I never did. I was introduced as Taylor and it stuck. For some reason, I always disliked other people who shared my name (which I believe still contributes to my hating Taylor Lautner). It just seemed unfair that I had to end up with a name that was so boring.
Furthermore, it was my mother's surname, which she never changed. The whole thing made no sense to me. Like Gogol, I had a last name for a first name, and I wasn't sure why. All I knew was that when my mother and I were together, besides the differences in skin color that made people's heads spin, there was the added confusion of my mother's last name being my first name and our last names being different.
To my knowledge, there is no one single meaning for Taylor, because it's supposed to be a last name. Unlike my siblings, whose names originated in far off countries and seemed to tie them to destiny and freedom and wisdom (my brother's name means "gift of God"in Hebrew and my sister's name means "dark" in Hindi and "light" in Gaelic), my name didn't really mean anything special. Did my name mean I was destined to become a tailor, something I didn't think would be meaningful or interesting to me?
However, my attitude toward the name changed as I slowly learned the story of what my name meant to my parents, what it meant for who I was. Names don't always have the significance that Jhumpa Lahiri would like us to believe that they do, but in my case, my name is such an important part of my story and of who I am. My mother named me Taylor because my parents were expecting a baby that, at the very least, wouldn't look white. When I was born, I had strawberry blond hair and blue eyes, very different from my mother's dark curly hair and warm brown eyes. They had already decided on my middle name, a gift from my great-grandmother, and it was my father's last name that was going to go on my birth certificate. My mom wanted me to have a piece of her, given that she couldn't find any of her features reflected in mine, or the features of her family, of the kinds of people she had grown up with and embraced all her life. Taylor was how she imparted that piece of my heritage onto me. All of the missing physical features I never had as a baby are wrapped up in that name, a name that symbolizes to me this space that I exist in that's not quite anything.
As I grew up, I began to look more and more like my mother, if in facial structure more than skin tone, and to be more and more like my family. I have my parents' bad eyes, my father's picky (or shall I say discerning) taste for Mexican food, food that isn't good enough in restaurants because it should be homemade, because it's always better homemade. My mom's side of the family tells me I have a gift for making peach cobbler, traditionally a Southern dish, an always important part of family holidays. I have my cousins' luck (that is to say, lack thereof) when it comes to cards. Even though I had no understanding of politics at the tender age of eight, I stayed up late to see whether or not Barack Obama was going to get elected, because somehow I knew it was important to my mother, and therefore it was important to me. I have my mother's laugh, unwelcome yet always, always welcome. My name was a symbol of everything I didn't have, but it was also a symbol of everything I did have, and everything I had yet to gain. Although it seems insignificant when I introduce myself, it is the symbol of so much power, and so much depth, that forms my destiny.
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