What’s in a name?

My Mum has a photo of me, fists clenched, eyes narrowed, at the starting line of the 200m race at sports day. So far so normal. What’s unusual is that I’m the only girl pitted against a pack of sweaty boys a good foot taller than me. My black gym plimsols the dot to the dash of their white trainers; all of us shuffled up in various states of preparedness against the freshly painted line Mr Lawson had been agonising over the day before. I’m looking at those boys with such ferocious determination that, as a grown up, its hard not to laugh.

I remember at the time thinking so clearly; I’ll be damned if I lose. I figured the boys would go off too fast; outcompeting each other in the first stretch. So long as I could hold them on the bend, I could make it up on the home straight.

Even now, as I think about it, I re-live a rising panic as they set off far faster than I could possibly go. My lungs screaming as the gap increased. The fear that I just couldn’t strike my feet as fast on the uneven ground as my brain was telling them to go. That, with body and mind totally out of whack, I might fall. That everyone would laugh. The realisation on the bend that yes! I had them still. That they were tiring. They were in sight. The intimacy of entering an acrid sound-cloud of ragged boys’ breathing. I wouldn’t lose. I wouldn’t lose.

Brain and body connected. A jumble of flailing limbs were soon behind me. I tucked in my elbows close to my body as they pumped past my skinny frame. I recall now a clinical observation then of the dry and scuffed knees beneath me. The home straight.

The French teacher, Veronique, with her gingery perm and cornflower blue long pleated skirt, was at the finish line. Around her neck was Mr Lawson’s spare lanyard and steel whistle. She raised a right arm in languid preparation and drew the whistle to her lips. Once she saw it was me, all laconic Parisian chic was abandoned in lieu of a cacophony of squawks of ‘Allez Vee-toria! Allez Allez!” I didn’t lose. I didn’t lose.

No one had any idea how much that race meant to me. I got a medal that day. In fact, more than that. I got a little gold cup. Under the shade of a massive oak, the headmaster shook my hand vigorously, presented me to the whole school and I was named Victrix Ludorum; Latin for the Winner of the Games. An important distinction; victrix is the female and lesser known form of the word, victor. My Dad had never been so proud, clapping at the back by the low stone wall. "Victrix Victoria” he called me for years afterwards. His little scrap of a girl had lived up to her name. I vowed that day I always would.

How exactly did I get from there to here? It is a question I’ve thought about a lot in the last eighteen months.

As women, we’re encouraged to “lean in”; and if you haven’t read the book but are familiar enough with the term to bandy it about, you may just take that to mean holding on to the vision and powering through. You might even extrapolate the idea to dispensing with anything that is not in service of The Goal. And that’s precisely what I do. Faced with a challenge, any challenge, I double down. I always have. That focus and belief that, if you just try hard enough, it will come good, generally serves me well. It breeds confidence and boundless optimism. And those things are infectious, which, in itself, help grease the wheels of everyday life. What a perfect closed loop strategy. Maybe someone should write a bestseller about it. And, if it ain’t broke, right? But, as I’ve discovered, there are some battles you cannot win.  My marriage was one of them.

More on that in a moment. But first a word on failing to fail.

Failure, naturally, loomed large. As far as I was concerned, that was for someone else. The higher the stakes, the more outlandish the feats I could go to to avoid it. For ten years, for example, I was utterly bemused to be on a medical research program. Every year they'd call me up, ask me some questions, and in return I’d get some WHSmith vouchers in the post. It seemed an advantageous trade for ten minutes a year reassuring them that yes, I could dress myself, no, no one was worried about my drinking, or had commented on my personal hygiene. Some years, just to mix it up, I’d venture a pun or two. They never landed. Researchers still could not fathom why a seemingly fit and healthy young woman, with no substance abuse issues, living in well ventilated accommodation, could have presented in an emergency room with lungs so saturated she was drowning inside. I shrugged. "How could you have not known you were so sick?" Is sheer force of will and paracetamol laced hot beverages not an answer? The truth of the matter was I’d had a persistent cough through the day and night for two years. I’d just 'leaned in’ years before Sheryl Sandberg made it a thing. I’m not sure when I learned to dissociate from normal physical cues that all is far from fine and dandy; fatigue, pain and the like. But it came with its advantages. Over that time, I’d earned 100% bonuses, I’d also worked two other jobs to get the requisite experience to switch careers into journalism.  I got a lot done. I was given more, because, you know, if you want a job done, give it to a busy person. Besides, two years of constant coughing had given me killer abs. This joke also did not go down well with medical professionals. When the exasperated doctor showed me a picture of my lino-cut lungs, I secretly congratulated myself on my resilience. As far as I was concerned, I hadn’t burnt out. I’d just run out of Beechams.

There’s a lot in a name; legend and folklore, fashion and culture, religion, heritage, pomp and patronage. We also carry the very real histories and hopes of our families. I have yet to meet a person who does not know the meaning nor the origin of their own name. Who hasn’t regarded the label on the tin and, at some point, wondered to what degree do these contents live up to the expectation?

Do you stand for light or strength or purity? Are you the Chosen One? Are you named after someone beloved and much missed? Have your relatives intoned sombrely, whilst doing the dishes, the yoke of pride you bear as a Gary or a Jagdip? Or are you a Kylie with a love-hate relationship with disco, perms and metallic hot pants?

Our names are both our voices and our echo. They are what we project into the world and what we hear reflected back to us. We feel them doubly. We suffer for them, too. We may be bullied, taunted and discriminated against. Hands up who’s desperately wished they could change their own, just to fit in?

As eleven years of Fritz, I had more than anyone’s fair share of “Heil Hitler” comments and Nazi salutes. Always, unbelievably, delivered with a smile. It never failed to blindside me in its sheer stupidity, not to mention the monstrous irony; Fritz is the anglicisation of a Hebrew surname.

The reasons for the breakdown of my marriage are private. And, as I’ve discovered, via the inordinate number of conversations, apps, books, social media feeds, podcasts, seminars, webinars and every other resource I’ve exhausted in an entirely clichéd Millennial bid to grapple with my world dissolving, those reasons no longer define me. Call me old fashioned, but airing dirty laundry is undignified at the best of times. Plus, I have two wonderful young children to consider. Protecting their wellbeing and right to a private life will always be my priorities. Yet, however private I wish to keep my private life, there is an aspect of it that will always remain as much in public hands as it is in my own. And that is my name.

Here’s the rub. It no longer fits. It doesn’t fit the person that has emerged nor does it truthfully describe the future ahead of me. In the re-casting and the re-crafting, I’ve discovered my name matters. And so I am changing it.

I knew I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t go back to my maiden name. I couldn’t stuff all the creased and dog-eared pages of my adult life back into the pamphlet of potential I was at 10 running against the boys at sports day. It would be like going back to live in your childhood bedroom, which, in my case, would be to a biro doodled, pine single bed, a purple lava lamp and walls covered in pictures of horses decoupaged around a giant poster of Keanu Reeves in Speed 2. Yes, I know this dates me and is also terrifying. Mainly for Keanu. No. Going back felt emotionally regressive, stunting, depressing and quite frankly, anti-feminist.

After all, I am no more my father’s chattel, with spinstery tail between my legs, than I ever was my husband’s. Dad chuckled when we talked about it and said; ‘Well, you’re right there. You go girl."

So I’m taking my Dubliner mother’s name. I’m taking it in all aspects of my life; personal and professional, public and private. I’m taking it in tribute to the Irish strength and solidarity that has scaffolded me as I quietly rebuilt. I’m taking her name in celebration of the fantastic cousins who had me belting out Cher power ballads with them in the rental car with the windows down in the dregs of Italian winter when my heart was broken. I’m taking it because of the innate kinship I feel with my Irish family; the craic, the musicality, the story-telling, the quick wit, the laughter, the hardship, the struggle, the strength, the bonds that only those who’ve known what it is to be on the outside can feel. These Irish pieces of me are as laughably undeniable and enduring as the eyes in my head are and always will be blue. These familiar, familial pieces provide the warp and weft of courage and creativity that I carry forward.

I’m also taking it because it sounds epic. And “epic" sounds pretty damn good as loose plans for the future go.

Yours,

Victoria Valentine

October 2022