Confessions of a Name Junkie

“What’s in a name?” queried a frustrated Juliet. Shakespeare’s famous question aside, what IS in a name?

Identity.

A name represents who we are and very few of us enjoy it when our name is the object of ridicule. The schoolyard mantra of “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” is great in theory, but is usually repeated when unkind words have been splattered like mud on a brand new shirt.

Names have power. I remember a bully from church camp. Her rampage of brutality did not last long after I discovered her last name. It was gross. I had never heard the term for yucky and vulgar as a last name before and a smile very deep and wide spread throughout my body when I made this discovery. I knew she would not torment me a moment longer, for I had the power over her name and thus, over her.

As an added bonus, the first name she was given morphed easily into “Piggy” by a single vowel. The next time she tried to corner me near the swimming pool and say something cruel, I chose not to use my fists to end her tyranny, but my words. I looked her straight in the eye and said something like, “I seriously doubt a girl named piggy gross has anything more to say to me.” She stopped in her tracks. In that moment I had the power and we both knew it. And that was the simple end to her bullying me.

Names hold power. Top tier celebrities need only one, corporations go to great lengths to protect theirs, items can be made with the right one, and people given odd ones can have a more difficult time on the playground. Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue,” springs to mind.

Each name carries its own vibration, meaning and sound. Some are pleasant and carry strength while others are grating and weak. I didn’t used to love the name Leroy until I heard it in French; LeRoi means “the king.” Cool beans, man. I have a friend whose last name is Strong and she is. I sort of envy all those last names, which express the current of wealth. You know, names like Finegold, Goldrich and Richman.

Okay, fine you say, but what does that have to do with anything?

Identity.

In the last year, this blog has taken several twists and turns. For those of you who have been following it from day one, you remember it started out as a vehicle for my Frida doll that was handmade by Vickie Getchell and presented to me by Kate McKinlay. The occasion was to celebrate a photo taken of Kate, her mother Gay McKinlay, Kimmmm Still and myself on Frida Kahlo’s 100th birthday when we dressed up as an homage to the great artist Frida. This photograph found its way into the hands of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and they included it on their Legacy Wall when they held a retrospective of Frida Kahlo’s artwork.

As Groom and I traveled around the Pacific Northwest selling our whimsical line of postage stamp jewelry, we took Frida doll everywhere, photographing her like the Travelocity Nome and I wrote of our adventures through her eyes. We named the blog “Frida Chiquita Kahlo: The Everyday Anthropologist” so I could write about my observations of human behavior.

Then, in September, after much fun and frivolity with our new cameras, we grew bored of only taking photos of Frida doll and began posting some of what we consider our arty shots. Our weekly entries then transitioned into a photoblog. We toyed with calling our new line of photography, to distinguish it from the jewelry, “The Language of Light.”

The transition seemed logical and linear to us, making sense as we came to these adjustments a little at a time.

Until…

Until I finally had an afternoon to play on the computer. This is a rare event indeed. A friend of ours, Octavia Hunter, has a fantastic website and photoblog called Araxastudios.com and she had just completed an amazing food shoot for a magazine. Her work is stunning, I can’t encourage you enough to check out her work.

Perusing her website, I started laughing. Hers is so straightforward while ours takes a meandering path. When people who know us log on every Wednesday to see and read the next installment, they understand the how’s and whyfor’s, but I finally looked at our website through the eyes of a brand new person and a dozen question marks appeared over my head like a cartoon character.

Our website, called Cinderella Lucinda, is for our jewelry. The blog site, however, is called Frida Chiquita Kahlo: Everyday Anthropologist and the “About Us,” describes The Language of Light photography. What the heck?

I am laughing at myself (or is it with myself?), my rubescent cheeks blushing red with embarrassment. I admit, humbling as this is, that I have had a bit of an identity crisis and looking back on my history, I see that I have expressed the various stages of my life through name changes.

Yes, I am a name junkie.

I could spin doctor that and simply claim my Native American-ness and tell you that I am participating in my cultural heritage and while that may be a factor, the reality is that in 18 years creating jewelry, we have changed our business name four times.

It started out as a “Wearable Art,” line, but too many people thought we made clothes. Then, feeling that strong anthropological pull, I wanted to emphasize how many different cultures we represented with the postage stamps plus my Native American ethnicity, so we tried Tribal Rhythms. This was fine, to a point, until we realized everybody thought we made pow-wow jewelry. Duh. Didn’t think that one through.

Then I tried what I thought would be a simple approach, just using my last name. Nope, too hard to pronounce and nobody could remember it anywho.

Aaargh. Then, while my sister was tracing our ancestors back to the Reservation, she discovered a great-great relative from the 1800’s by the name of Cinderella Lucinda. Bam! That’s it. Humorous, fun to say, easy to remember, is part of my Native American background and represents the whimsical nature of our jewelry line.

And the best part? My entire life is a Cinderella story. If you’ve read that fairytale, then you know my life. Which as I’m typing this, brings me to my actual point. Since my life is straight out of Grimm’s imagination, why fight it? There is no need for an identity search or further diversification. If anything, focus would be best.

This is why we are transitioning from Frida Chiquita Kahlo: Everyday Anthropologist to Cinderella Lucinda: Once Upon a Time…This Week for a more streamlined approach so that everything aligns, our jewelry, photography and blog.

We still intend to share our photos and our weekly adventures, but desire cohesiveness. Pardon our dust while we remodel and we appreciate your patience as we discover who we are.

Some of you are blessed to know right away while for us, it’s as the Beatle’s describe, it’s been a “long and winding road…”