We’ve talked about identity quite a bit, but today something really weird happened. Jim told us that his real name is Marcus. WHATT?? Why would you have people call you Jim if your name is Marcus. Well, Jim (Marcus) explained that his middle name (Jim) came first on his American passport, and so that’s how his named appears on ACES. He said that it has just been easier to go by Jim.
This kind of changed my perception of how important a person’s name is to their identity. Whether he was called Jim or Marcus wasn’t really all that big of a difference, but it got me thinking. What if my name wasn’t Haley? What if Charlie’s name wasn’t Charlie. Would our personalities be different? Would we act differently? Do we identify ourselves based on the name that we are given?
This also made me think about when I was abroad and my Italian professor couldn’t pronounce my name. The H gave him such trouble. It was slightly amusing to hear him struggle each day. Ahh-Lee. He would call me. It was silly. But it was interesting in a way. The hard H of my name was something that so clearly marked me as American and made me wonder about Jim. Did going by Jim make him feel more American or did it make him feel like he was an outsider?
Also, while I’m on the topic of identity and abroad, since Chaz went on a whole long schpeel about his murce (man purse) and how it made him feel so in the French circle, I should probably tell you about my attempt to fit in while I was in Florence. I thought that the only way I was ever going to look, act and feel like a local was if I wore a leather jacket and a scarf. So, I set off on the journey to find la giacca di pelle perfetta. I searched long and hard, until I stumbled upon Massimo. I tried on probably every jacket in the store. It had to be perfect. It had to make me look Italian. Two hours later, I immerged from the store clad in leather, kissing Massimo on the left then the right cheek, “Ciao Ciao!” I said to him. And as I strolled through the leather market back to my apartment, I finally felt like I was one of them. I waved to the venders as I normally did, but this time they responded to me in Italian. I guess there are a lot of things that contribute to a person’s identity. For the Fiorentinas, the leather jacket meant I was one of them.
I guess for Marcus, going by Jim makes him one of us (Americans).
