The Anatomy of a name

When I was 15, I began the process of unnaming myself. Peeling my name from my skin like wet  clothes. Planting it beneath the soil. Giving it back to the earth. My name was never really mine. I was  dressed in it the night my mother and father had the same dream. They had been bickering about what  to name me; my mother wanting to name me after her mother, my father, as always, unsure. They both  had a dream in which they chose the same name for me. It came to them like a ghost. 

And my father fell in love with my name. He was the last person I told when the unnaming was  complete. He began naming the plants in our house after my dead name. Desperately trying to attach it  to something living. Trying to lay flowers at its grave. He had dirt under his fingernails most days, 

I saw him. 

He made me hate my family name. He had my dead name tattooed on him next to our family crest.  Reid became that juxtaposition. Became such a representation of my father that I no longer wanted the  name itself. I had already chosen my first name and I refused to be christened anything not of me. To  be his. 

River didn't come to me in some dream. It was one out of the list of names I'd tried. Somehow it just  stuck. Something about water. How it can carve out rock. Make room for itself. Create borders. How it  can run and pour and crash and spill. How it is part of us. Most of us. Somehow I am water, and my  mother knows it too. 

And my mother fell in love with my name. She wrote it in letters to her parents. Had it engraved on pens she gave to me. Acknowledged that it was mine. And she loved what was mine. And she loved  me. When I told her I had unnamed myself, she helped me search for what to be called. She too knows  what it is to be hidden, 

beneath the ocean's breath. 

Waiting to be named. Like a right of passage. Like learning what the word freedom means. My new  name poured from her mouth like honey, but it took four years for it to come off his tongue without  leaving a bitter aftertaste. 

Those days, I was mine, she was my mother, and he was only a name 

until I went to Ireland. Found my family name tucked away on the wall of an emigration museum with  an overview of its history. I realized that I was part of and from this place. My name had a weight to it  then. It was not just my father but an entire bloodline. 

This name is mine. 

And there is some power to a name. Reid holds a whole tangled history. It means I am from  somewhere. River I chose myself, yet it ties me to every place my body is from. My legacy is one of  water. The cold rain that permeates the skies over distant land. My ancestors and I have always been  falling. There is something holy about that. About knowing that there is somewhere to land. About  touching ground and sinking in. Saying you belong. Here the earth sings to you. Come home.  

Your ancestors are calling. 

This land has an ability to heal itself.

This name is of English origin. A nickname for someone with red hair or a ruddy complexion. 

Something to be said of a people who can acknowledge the pain of their own history.  

From the Old English read meaning red. 

It did not rain in Ireland a single day, but this place filled some empty part of me.  

It was brought to Ireland by settlers in the 17th Century. 

Healed me. Made me know what god could be. 

It is also used as a synonym for mulderrig from the Gaelic dearg meaning red. 

I will come back to this place. It can teach me how to hope again. 

The motto for Reid is firm. 

Though in Ireland there may be clouds most days 

my whole world will be bathed in light.

About the Author

River Day Reid is a writer and photographer based in Philadelphia. He is a former UArts student and is now a third year at Arcadia. While at UArts, he won an award for a short story, and some of his work has been published with the ICA. He specializes in writing both poetry and creative non-fiction.