My name is Fish

I have written a book. It's called What I Think About When I Think About... Swimming and is illustrated by Katie O'Hagan and published by Troika Books. It's not my first book. I wrote this. And this. And co-edited and contributed to this, if you judge a book by the existence of an ISBN.

But as we know, when it comes to kids, nothing you do before they exist counts. As such, this is my first book.

It is certainly my first book for children. Though I hope adults will read it and enjoy it as well. And my first book under my given name of Eleanor, rather than the name I generally use, Ellie.

It felt important to me to reclaim Eleanor. I was known throughout childhood as Eleanor, except to family members. I remember starting university and introducing myself as "Ellie, Eleanor, whatever" and so it came to pass that somewhere around the aged 20 mark, Eleanor went and Ellie stayed.

At university I stood for election to a sabbatical NUS post (editing the student newspaper). I used the name Eleanor. Whilst I don't blame the name. I lost. I didn't take that chance again, switching to Ellie for my next election, when the winner of a round the world travel writing competition was put to a reader vote in The Guardian. I was Ellie. And I won.

The job I had been in prior to that, as a business journalist, in which I lasted four months, published me as Eleanor. And the job I got after that published me as Ellie. And Ellie, once again, stayed.

But it feels right to reclaim Eleanor for my children's book. The name your parents give you is a gift. I remember telling each of my children, alone with them on their first night, your name is X, and explaining why we made the choice we had, what cultural and emotional baggage it would give them. what compromises were made, and how I hoped they would grow to love their names. And always at the back of my mind I have felt a little ungrateful not to use the name I was given.

Fish, of course, rarely have individual names. The fish in my book thinks about many things. His (it is never directly referred to, but Katie O'Hagan's wonderful illustrations most definitely look male) ponderings cover nostalgia, fears, metaphysical concepts and the meaning of life, as well as wordly pleasures. But I think in his musings, were he to have a name, he would come to the same conclusion about his own book that he dreams of writing, and use his full one. If none of that makes sense, you'll have to buy the book. You can do so here.


What I Think About When I Think About... Swimming by Eleanor Levenson and Katie O'Hagan (Troika Books, 2014)

Because it is my name!

John Proctor:  Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! 

I studied Arthur Miller's The Crucible for my Literature A Level and to be honest, compared to the splendour of Under Milk Wood and Richard III, my other set texts, I just didn't take to it. And what I particularly didn't get was John Proctor's refusal to sign his name to a confession of witchcraft in order to save his life. Surely, I thought at the time, it is only a name.

I've not given The Crucible too much thought since then. But it came into my head again this week when reading about the use of dead children's names for undercover officers in the Metropolitan Police. I've been surprised by how horrified I am by this, not least because I thought the country suffered a mass over-reaction to the Alder Hey organ scandal. 

But I feel very strongly that the names we gave our children were a gift from us to them. As the language of the reporting of this case suggests, it is not just a name that has been stolen, but an identity. Their given names reflect their cultural heritage, their religious heritage, the age in which we live and our own taste and,  no doubt, our class, and that's before their surname has been taken into account. 

I don't buy into the need to choose a unique first name for children. Not for me made up names or unusual spellings. But I would be very very surprised if they shared their whole name with anyone else in the world, given they have an unusual surname with my surname as an extra given name. For it to be used by anyone else, be it a fraudster or the police, would be theft of something most precious. Add to that the fact that it's not just identity theft, but theft from dead children, and I find it all hugely abhorrent. Why? Because, as Arthur Miller knew, and I now know, it is their name.

Related post: What's in a name?

Addendum
I just emailed someone I used to know through work this week. She was convicted of a criminal offence that she says she didn't do. I asked how she was and whether her career was back on track. Her main concern, she said, wasn't her career or friendships, it was to clear her name. 

The Christmas card list

When my daughter was born, just over a week before Christmas last year, much to the amusement of family and friends it was vitally important to me to write Christmas cards and include her on them. I had our cards in my hospital bag and my parents were dispatched, the day she was born, to get me multiple copies of a picture of the baby to include in the cards and many stamps to bring back the next day. Each evening when my husband left our bedside he did so with envelopes to post.

It's not just that I wanted to share our good news, though that too, but I wanted to write our daughter's name again and again and in doing so confirm her existence. We, the three of us, wish you a merry Christmas.

This year we've become that vomit inducing family who puts a picture of our child on the front of our cards. It's a sticker of her on a swing and not a printed picture and certainly not a posed family shot but still, I make myself want to throw up. Somebody shoot me.

It's second nature to me now to write my daughter's name in cards. It's no longer new. My hormones no longer rule my actions, or not all the time anyway. But that we can do so, and sign her name, and send best wishes from us all, still feels incredibly important. It's why I think those friends we've not seen or spoken to since the last card remain on the Christmas card list and us on theirs. Not because they need to receive our card, but because we need to send them. Because the act of writing, the act of signing a name and sending it out there into the world, it proves you exist, that you're part of something, that you're still here.