What's in a Name?

Warning: Mild Spoilers

Our names identify us, individualize us, and connect us. Yet, as Shakespeare writes in Romeo and Juliet, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Both The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee explore how names shape our identities and how our different names represent the different lives we've lived. Having changed my own name throughout my life, I identified with the characters, finding that sometimes it takes more than one name to capture all the versions of ourselves in our lives. Different names tell a different story of who we are, how we identify and with whom, and either reveal or distinguish where we came from.

In Jasmine, the eponymous character has a unique name for each of the different lives she embodies. As she emigrates from India to the U.S. living first in New York, then in Iowa, she is given a different moniker - as a child, Jyoti, as a married woman in India, Jasmine, as a nanny in New York she is Jase, and then plain Jane in Iowa.

"To break off the past, he gave me a new name: Jasmine," writes Mukherjee of the character's first transition between identities bestowed upon her by her husband. As the young teen wife of an engineer preparing to continue his studies in the U.S., Jasmine grows from a child with big dreams that are scoffed at into a young woman fueled by curiosity, love, and an ambition that seems possible for the first time. Jyoti was a country girl, Jasmine is a city woman.

Similarly, just as her name Jasmine forms from another's love, so is her New York nickname, Jase, an affectionate shortening illustrating the love and friendship of Taylor, her employer turned love interest. "On Claremont Avenue, in the Hayeses' big, clean, brightly lit apartment, I bloomed from a diffident alien with forged documents into adventurous Jase," narrates the author. Shortened from Jasmine, Jase connotes jazz music in both sound and personality - rambling, exploratory, spontaneous, and chaotic. With Taylor, Jase's multiculturalism, past and present can coexist, like different instruments playing their own riffs yet intertwining to form the tantalizing tunes that characterize jazz music.

In sharp contrast, Jane, as she is christened in Iowa by Bud, becomes an oversimplified version of herself. The narrator explains, "Bud calls me Jane...Plain Jane is a role, like any other. My genuine foreignness frightens him. I don't hold that against him. It frightens me too." Fleeing from the violence of her past, she finds refuge in taking care of Bud and his adopted son from Vietnam. Jane represents safety and security, but also a splitting from her former selves. This one dimensionality of Jane, is likely why in the end, she finds herself stepping out of that role despite its comfort, preferring to embody a version of herself where both her Indian past and her American present can thrive.

Similarly, the main character in The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri changes his name throughout the story as a means of emphasizing the different worlds he lives in. Given Gogol as his pet name at birth after the Russian author Nikolai Gogol, while his parents awaited news of his official name from his grandma in India, the character changes his name to Nikhil before college. His two names demarcate the two different cultures he is a part of - Gogol represents his childhood and the Bengali community of his parents, Nikhil represents his adulthood, his Americanness, though neither name originates from the place they symbolize for him. "'There's no such thing as a perfect name,'" Nikhil says at a dinner party with his wife's friends, suggesting that even his chosen formal name, is not vast enough to hold the multiple facets of his multiculturalism.

The death of his father and demise of his two serious romantic relationships reveals he has a need to be both Nikhil and Gogol. One represents his individuality, the other his community. Gogol realizes, "The givers and keepers of Gogol's name are far from him now...Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exist. Yet the thought of the eventual demise provides no sense of victory, no solace...." Despite hating his name when he is young due to its seeming randomness, it ultimately ties him to his father.

Names connect us, distinguish us, and define us. It makes sense then that they change with us as we change over time. The secret, both Lahiri and Mukherjee, seem to suggest, is to hold space for all of our names and identities within us.