honor thy name
a portrait of honoring that command of your identity
named after a city ya ain’t never seen
spellbinding copperheads
banging a tambourine
and it’s the kiss of death, but it’s the only way out
galloped up to a mirror, looked her right in the mouth
galloped up to a mirror, looked her right in the mouth
ثوايبة / THUWEIBA
in my sophomore year of college, i met this professor and i’d introduced myself to her as i normally do, with my nickname, Thuw. she’d noticed my name come up as something longer over email. she’d asked me to say it to her, repeated it back to me, and told me she thought it was beautiful. i gave her the spiel i’d crafted up in high school when someone asked about the origins of my name.
“oh, my dad named me, it’s really old. my mom wanted to name me mary, like, after the virgin mary, isn’t that crazy? i can’t imagine myself as a mary.”
“people could hardly pronounce my name correctly growing up. so to get over the stammering and stumbling, i’ve shortened it. still, i run into the tongue-twisting game of ‘no it’s actually…’”
when i was a little girl in middle school, i’d go to the teen center in our town’s mall. it was the after-school spot, where my friends and i would paint each other’s nails, play video games, drink soda, and nibble on auntie annies’s pretzels.
a faint memory, heading to the back room to grab a snack. this boy from school was there, he’d just gotten my snapchat that week; my username was my full first and last name.
“are the letters after ‘Thuw’ in your username just random letters?”
i think i just nodded yes. i don’t remember, but i remember i didn’t challenge it. i just remember the question rocking the foundation of my identity. i’ve spent most of my life preemptive in avoidance of having to recite my long name spiel.
the receptionist at the doctor's office will start the call in a hesitant and cautious tone, “is this…,” i’ll break on the tail-end of her train of thought, save us both a few seconds.
when i’d left the country to meet the rest of my father’s family, i was asked by my aunt why my father had given me an american name. i laughed, my broken somali couldn’t form thought into the language to ask if she was kidding; or if she truly did believe my name didn’t belong here either.
“foo? like foo fighters?”
this boy i’d been seeing in my junior year of college took me back to listen to his friends' jam in their crowded college apartment. it was a long night lengthy in new relations. i’m no stranger to the fact that introductions take a few extra minutes with me. sitting on the couch, the boy sandwiched in between me and a friend of his, cross-conversing with this guy, imparting the mini crash course of my name over the sound of drums colliding with cymbals and out-of-tune guitar strings.
over the years, i’ve adapted an “i’ll be whatever you want me to be” attitude. i don’t really care for correcting, i think, i want to avoid the confusion rather than sit with it, preempting being caught up in explanation. perhaps a manifestation of the residual shame and annoyance i’d harbored for my name in childhood. i’d rather avoid me.
in line at fast food chains, i borrow a friend's name. save the barista the few extra moments it’ll take her to figure out how to recite the syllables printed on my receipt, i know she’d use her best effort to get me to my sweet treat. at a party, i’m whatever they hear, which is usually sue, foo, and my favorite one, phil.
as a kid, my siblings and i would crawl in our parents bed and our dad would tell us stories before bed. usually, it was something from the stack of library books we’d gotten that week. my favorite nights were the nights he’d tell us stories from his life, or what our names meant.
my dad loves history with a proclivity to islamic history. my name first belonged to Thuwaybuh, the prophet muhammad’s wet nurse, and means ‘deserving of god's reward’. my father would tell me i had to move through life honoring it. i can’t hold a name so laden in history and dishonor the women before me.
a heavy load of responsibility, and i’d failed to uphold his heeding.
within the past year or so, i’ve started to use my full name. i began to grow annoyed by bosses, professors, receptionists, and peers who’d flat-out refuse to respect or recognize my being.
“oh, i won’t even try– i'll butcher that.”
i’ve arrived at a point now where you honor my name or don’t refer to me at all. i’m Thuweiba or i’m nothing.
i’m the eldest daughter to siblings with similar names rich in history, deserving of honor and reverence. i do not want to paint the portrait that making yourself smaller is how you adjust yourself to the world.
the world would never dare ask such a thing. we do that silly work ourselves.
a name is interesting because it is a central part of our being, our identification, but majority don’t pick that part of their identity.
you can choose to shape and ground yourself within it or uproot yourself and craft your own. i’ve resisted the shape of my name and have thought of changing it, a wild but understandable thought to me now.
i’m honoring every part of me especially something as special as the command for people to reach me. and i’m shedding myself of my life-long conditioning of the limitations of western ideology.
identity has been something i’ve been giving a lot of time and thought to this year. i’ve been through a lot of internal and external changes in what feels to me a short span of time. it all feels so sudden. senior year of college has served me with so many puzzling emotions. this one i’ve been feeling most days. it’s like i’m on the brink of finally becoming what i’ve been crafting, and cultivating in the years preceding me, coming out of that waiting period before truly ‘being’—-that make any sense?
i feel silly it’s taken me this long to truly accept my name; but growing up in a predominantly white town, in the suburban midwest will do that to a girl.
if you’ve gotten to the end, thank you so much for reading, my name is Thuweiba and this is my corner of the interweb where i nerd out on words, music, media and practice my favorite hobby of dissecting and preserving memories.
if you’d like to stay and join, i love words, music, people, discovery and i share these things here! i’d love to have you!