What's in a name? An Identity?

What’s in a name? An old question, an old riddle, that’s deceptively simple. Shakespeare wondered if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So does our name or our nickname dictate who we are? Are we ruled over by the names given to us? We do not choose what name we are born with and the best of nicknames (or at least the ones that we can’t do away with no matter how we try) are given by friends and collogues. Could our only power over our title be our very actions? The very acceptance of nicknames gives them power over our actions. To fight against an unwanted name is to fight against how our self is viewed by others. Many people do not go by their "real" name, giving it little power in how that person is viewed. Those people sometimes try on other names to see how they fit and match and if the names make them feel better.  Luckily, most people, brush that aside and go on with life allowing their one title to be just that…a title…nothing more.

In the novel, Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee, has a main character with multiple names and each of them means something different to her, each a different life. She tries them all on as a new self, one after the other. When she looked back at her time with her husband, Prakash, she sees that he "had taken Jyoti and created Jasmine," that Jasmine is a new creation from the ashes of Jyoti. Jasmine did not give herself that name and she did not become the identity that is "Jasmine" on her own, she admits the Prakash made it. As Jasmine she was to die on a "bed of fire" with Prakash’s suit, but she transformed to Jazzy, an alien in hiding, and continued to live in the new world, America. Again she did not chose her name or how she came to that life.

She may not have full control over her name but it is clear that she does (and we do too) have control over transforming into another identity. If she had no control over changing she would have never become Jasmine and even if she did she would have died on a "bed of fire" as Jasmine and not continued to live as Jazzy. And she definitely began the next transformation by stating that she wanted to go to New York and she had an address for her destination (pg. 134).

Most important of all is that because of all these selves and her drive to move forward and transform, she begins to take control of who she is going to be. Never before in her life had she ever back-tracked, each identity and its title was the next transformation to adapt to life, but by the end of the book she chooses to take a step back to a previous self. She realizes that she has already stopped thinking of herself as Jane and has begun to see her self as Jase again. She will re-position the stars of her future to fit her needs (pg. 240). Once she chose to go back to Jase she was in control and stopped running from her name and situation (and run towards what she really wanted). Returning to Jase is the equivalent to her choosing her own name. And that is why most people have one name and they don’t fight it; it is because they have chosen that name and taken it for their own.