From Joey Comeau’s Overqualified, which I previously reviewed:

It’s Joey, not Joe or Joseph. My grandfather was Joe Comeau, and Joseph is my mother’s name for me, but I have always been Joey. I worry sometimes that it’s a childish name. Would a “Joe” tell jokes in bed, perform puppet shows after sex, and give every body part a different high-pitched voice? It seems unlikely. The names we choose for ourselves aren’t meaningless. They’re self-fulfilling prophecies.

When I was a kid, my mother called me Robby. It was just the name I went by, and I was fine with it for a while. Then at some point I decided I didn’t like that, and I told her that my name was Robert, and that I would like to be called Robert, if it’s all the same to her.

I remember feeling that Robby was a silly name, and that I wanted to be taken seriously, so I would wear a serious name. My grandfather was Bob, and that was fine for him, but I would be Robert. There’s still a chair at my dad’s house that has “Robby” written on the back. It bothered me when I was a kid.

Sometimes I wonder if that was a mistake.

In late high school my name stopped really mattering. Maybe before then, but by then everyone was calling me Mason and it didn’t bother me. I had no preference. I even preferred it to Robert sometimes. Robert is a name I never liked seeing typed. So when I made a Myspace profile, back when that was a thing that you did, I put my name as Rob. I didn’t figure it would matter.

But then a few people called me Rob, and suddenly I had a new name. I used it in a few other places. It suited me: it didn’t speak to me of anything in particular. So, with the exception of my family, I was now either Rob or Mason. There were distinct groups which stuck with one or the other, and they mostly stuck with their own. It was here that I started letting other people introduce me, so there would be no confusion.

Then I moved to Boston and there were no more distinct groups, and I had to do the introducing myself. People never quite knew what to call me. Sometimes an introduction required explanation.

I keep going back to the time when I was a kid, though. I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 years old. I decided then I wanted to be taken seriously, and I gave myself a name that would be taken seriously. Would I have been different if I was Robby?

I can’t bring it back. You can’t just change your name. It’s an organic process. But I wonder.