When I was growing up, my mom taught me how to answer the phone:
Hello. This is the Coe household. Who am I speaking to?
(If you were good at this, you could say the above as if a single word—HellothisistheCoehouseholdwhoamIspeakingto?—prompting callers to either say “Excuse me?” or ignore you altogether—”Is your mother there?”)
There was an interesting addendum to the lesson, though: if someone ever asked for my dad by his proper first name, I was to tell the caller that he wasn’t home, even if he was.
“Just ask who is calling and then tell them that your father will get back to them.”
“I don’t get it. Isn’t that his name?”
“Yes, but no one who knows him calls him that.”
And it’s true! Anyone who knows my dad personally calls him by his first two initials, never by his proper first name.
Thinking in the way of children, I just figured that this was how the world worked—some people had one name that everyone used, and other people didn’t.
Years later, in high school and afterwards, when so many people had nicknames and oddball appellations, I just figured that this was how the world worked—some people collected nicknames as they went through life, and other people—like me—didn’t.
So that’s where I was, when a few years ago, I talked about names with a former colleague.
I’d heard one of her friends call her a totally unfamiliar name that she’d responded to. What was up with that?
“Oh, that’s what everyone from college and my friends outside work call me.”
“And you’re ‘Annie’ here?”
She paused. “Yes…and I’m ‘Anne’ in my family. People at work call me ‘Annie.'”
“That seems like a lot of names.”
“Well, I can usually tell how someone knows me from which name they use.”
The idea hit me with a jolt.
Oh.
You could do that?
The idea of segmenting people in your life using your name seemed ingenious. I realized, with a further jolt, that my own father had been doing this all his life.
When I moved to Colorado in 2018, resetting my personal and professional networks, I had the opportunity to adopt a new name.
And I didn’t.
It’s a hard thing to keep track of! If there’s only one name people every use for you, it’s hard to imagine your way out of it.
But there’s always a next time—I just need to remember that you can always put your name to use.
Taylor Coe 