Personal Narrative: I Am Changing My Name

1: Better Left Unnamed There is nothing more important than being able to reconcile all of who you are and who you can be. Everybody is made up of all the different people others see them as, and names characterize those different people. Mr. W. Jackson Pierce would be your boss, William your coworker, and Bill your friend. They are all the same person, but, at the same time, they are also radically different people. So when someone decides to change their name, they take agency over the core of their being. When I was in third grade, my mother told me a story about how my middle name would have been my first name. At that moment, I decided to go by my middle name, Giovanni, instead of my first name, Nicholas. At the time I did not know …show more content…
Then, I would be very friendly and amiable, but I would not be go-getting or steadfast, and so I would work harder, making me distanced from my friends. I spent a large part of my time in middle school wondering which version of me was the best and constantly changing my mind about it. Later, in high school, I began to synthesize, to find some common ground. Somewhere between the drum beat and the major tune, and not quite either, I found an exquisite melody: I compromised. Whereas “Giovanni” would have spent all weekend reading a book in the library and “Nicholas” would have spent that weekend lounging around with friends and putting of work, I talked with my friends about Kant or Nietzsche as we studied together for a test. I have found an ineffable state. I have become something different than what I had thought that I would be. I am unsure of exactly who I am, but I know that I am someone who is better than those two fake ideas. As for who exactly I am now, who is to say? Maybe just leaving things unnamed might be for the