“Names are choices—just usually not ours.”
names
Posted inCulture, Essays & Criticism, Featured, Nonfiction, Reading List
’Names Have Power’: A Reading List on Names, Identity, and the Immigrant Experience
Whether adding a hyphen or changing one’s name completely, the process of naming can be complex.
Posted inNonfiction
“Do You Get Shit for Your Name?”
When your name is Osama and you’re living in post-9/11 America, you always know The Question is coming.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Other Rachel Lyons
Having a fairly common name gives Rachel Lyon occasional glimpses into the lives of her doppelgangers — and the roads she has not taken.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, Featured, Nonfiction
Other Rachel Lyons
Having a fairly common name gives Rachel Lyon occasional glimpses into the lives of her doppelgangers — and the roads she has not taken.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Featured, Nonfiction, Story
Other Rachel Lyons
Having a fairly common name gives Rachel Lyon occasional glimpses into the lives of her doppelgangers — and the roads she has not taken.
Posted inCurrent Events, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
The Power of a Neighborhood’s Name
When Google Maps’ data renamed an African American neighborhood, it opened up residents to the looming forces of gentrification.
Posted inFeatured, Nonfiction, Quotes
The Other National Pastime: Unusual Baby Names
“Brayden” and “Nevaeh” have got nothing on their 17th-century predecessors, “Waitstill” and “Supply.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Notes from a Baby-Names Obsessive
Names channel our identity — or at least our parents’ idea of our future identity — in ways both big (class, ethnicity) and small (subcultural affiliations, self-awareness). When the mother’s American and the father’s French, things get complicated, fast.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
On Falsely Laying Claim to a Literary Lineage
The first time I admitted that yes, I was related to Francis Scott Key, it came as a shock, even to me, because, of course, I was lying. While my other college friends experimented with drugs and God, I experimented with genealogy. Soon, I found myself trying to learn to pretend to be a writer […]