What's in a Name?

Parents, be very careful about naming your children. It can have a profound effect on their lives. It did on mine.

I was born during the Second world war, 1944 to be precise, and on Good Friday of that year, which must be the saddest day in the Christian calendar.  Not an auspicious time in any sense.  My family were sleeping in a bomb shelter my father had built in the cellar of the house at the time.  I once asked if I'd been born down there but was assured that the event had taken place upstairs in my parent's bedroom, after which we moved back down into the cellar.

My mother, in her wisdom, chose to name me Christine much in the way that people throughout history have been named Coronation, or Jubilee, or some such ridiculous name. Though they aren't as bad as one poor chap I read about in ancient somewhere-or-other who was called "the day the well fell in".  Imagine going through life saddled with that! Anyway, the name meant nothing to me for the first few years of my life. It was just the name I was known by.

It was never abbreviated and I had no other. My older sister had two names from which to choose, which I grew to envy, but I had been given just the one, as if they couldn't be bothered to think of another, or were too poor to afford more than one. Nor was I ever given a nickname or pet name. Christine I was, and Christine I remained.  I was duly so registered and christened into the Church of England, as were most children in those days, and that was that.

Although mine was not a church-going family they'd had some religious training in their own upbringing so, at some point during the tender years of my childhood, I was sent to Sunday School.  I doubt this would have happened had we not lived next door to a Sunday School teacher; an elderly woman and pleasant enough as I remember her. I believe her name was Bessie Clegg, a good old Lancashire name, though I could be wrong about that. My brain is the sort in which names find it very easy to avoid detection, moving around as they do in a sort of haze.

This Miss Clegg, who was one of two unmarried sisters, would hold my hand and walk me the mile or so to St Matthew's Parish Church every week and we would meet in the adjoining school house where, week by week, I learned what it meant to be a Christian. It appeared to involve "sitting still" and "being good" amongst other things. 

Like most children I asked about the meaning of my name. It meant "Christian" apparently and was a feminine form of that word.  So this, it appeared, is not only what I was but who I was.

At the age of twelve I was confirmed into the Church which, for those not in the know, means that one confirms the vows made by one's parents at infant baptism. Much later I was to receive yet another baptism, by full immersion, so I was thrice blessed. Or thrice beholden anyway.

But I digress. We were expected to leave Sunday School after confirmation and attend church services instead, although there was a Rector's Class for teenagers which I attended for a short while. There I learned two things.  One was that nobody could answer my questions, so it seemed a waste of time going. The second was that the older boys, of sixteen years or so, would take the girls to bed after the evening service.  For a thirteen year old girl this was an alarming prospect, especially as I had no knowledge of "that sort of thing". 

It was tried on me once and only my naiveté saved me on that occasion.  Whatever else those boys were being taught there was clearly no mention of inter-personal relationships of a sexual nature, as far as under-age girls were concerned anyway.  Needless to say, I left the Rector's class.

From then on it was holy communion and matins or evensong, all of which I loved attending. St Matthew's church was not so High that we involved the Blessed Virgin, nor were there "smells and bells", but we did chant the services, sing psalms, and had a crucifix instead of a plain cross. It was this crucifix that was to colour the next thirty or so years of my life.

I would stand before it, beneath the pulpit, and gaze into the beautiful but infinitely sad and long-suffering face of Christ.  This, then, was what it meant to be a christian, a Christine.  My fate, it seemed, was sealed.  I was to suffer. To sacrifice myself in the service of others.

This was reinforced at home, where all of us suffered some degree of deprivation in order that my mother might achieve her dream of one day owning her own home.  I gave up more than she will ever know to that end, but that's another story. I saw it as my lot in life so to do.

Many years later I broke out of this straightjacket called destiny, and realised that there was more to life than serving and appeasing.  Now I am a much more rounded character.  To mark this I have taken on some new names, befitting my new status.  I am and always will be Christine at heart, that's too deeply rooted now to be totally eliminated, but I am discovering so many facets to my personality that even I am amazed.  I am branching out in all directions.

Whatever names I am now known by are not intended to deceive, but to help me express thought processes that the tightly constricted me would never have dared consider.  This is today's me, the new me, the "look out world, here I come" me, the me you know as hochiwich - amongst other things.

© 2002 edited 2013