Elizabeth

(My real name. Perhaps I'll explain the pseudonym some other time.)

Elizabeth

I once read somewhere that my name means devoted. When I was a kid, a friend and I looked up our names in one of those name dictionaries that pregnant women often consult in search of something meaningful to call their child, only to end up combining two names into something ridiculous like Kyler or Ashlynn. My friend’s name (Sara) meant princess while mine merely meant devoted, which to an eight year-old can only mean boring. Nonetheless I’ve always liked my name. It means much more than the definition I discovered in that name book years ago. It means my mom. She’s Isabel, and I’m the Anglo version, Elizabeth. I’m Elizabeth because she could not be. In Cuba during the time of her birth, it was uncool for parents to give their children Anglo names, so while my grandmother wanted an Elizabeth she decided to settle for an Isabel instead. Thirty-something years later in the United States, Isabel named her first and only daughter Elizabeth as a sort of middle-finger to Cuban craziness.

                Elizabeth is sophisticated, perhaps even snobby. She has little time to bother with poems and pop songs – though admittedly, this probably has something to do with the fact that Elizabeth doesn’t rhyme with anything appealing (death, bad breath, crystal meth…you get the picture). Elizabeth is thank God I’ve got a Christian name so the priest doesn’t give me dirty looks during confirmation rehearsal and wonder aloud why kids these days are given made-up names like Echo and Whisper and Kyler and Ashlynn. He made those kids choose proper names for confirmation. I got to keep mine. Elizabeth is one of those strong names that require their bearers to be tough, too. That’s because Elizabeth is always a fight against those who would cut her down to something smaller and weaker and devoid of meaning, such as Liz, Beth, Betty, Bessie, and God forbid, Lizzy. Elizabeth is strong and built to last. Elizabeth is saints and queens and movie stars and my mom who couldn’t be but made her daughter a declaration of independence.