Becoming Becks

On changing my name in midlife.

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I changed my name on a Tuesday. I had been thinking about it for years, but when it happened, it was quick and unplanned. Changing my first name had been an idea, a topic, a recurring thought for years, but somehow, it had simmered in the background, a thing repeatedly glanced in the rear-view mirror of my life. 

When I finally decided it was time, I was sitting on my tiny balcony in a red reclining chair that just fit into this tiny hovering room. There was no space for anything else, and even getting in and out of the chair was a challenge. I was sitting in the red chair, writing an Instagram post. Apparently, that’s the way to change your name these days: an announcement online. 

I had looked into legal regulations for changing your name in Germany, and it was complicated, and in my case, as someone who was not changing genders at the same time, not possible. Or rather only possible if you prove your name (your existence) by it appearing in magazines or books. So, in a modern chicken-egg scenario, you have to change and use your new name before you can legally change it, at least according to German law.  

I looked at my passport and read my given name to myself. Who was she, this person? It felt like she was missing. Rebecca Evelyn Maria. Had I ever been her? And when? And in which circumstances? Which phase of my life? 

Growing up in a religious, conservative town in Germany, my name came with an attached femininity I could never live up to, no matter how hard I tried. My name felt appropriate for the place I’d been born in - but was it ever appropriate for me? 

George from The Famous Five was the most fascinating character of my childhood. Decades before personal pronouns became a thing, George asked to be addressed as “Master” instead of “Miss.” She had changed her name to “George” from “Georgina”. She was bending gender identities and was living as the person she wanted to be. I wished I had had a friend like her. But no one was in sight, so instead, I decided to become her myself. I hid my long blond hair in a hat that I was wearing all summer. And I wanted to keep my boyish, kid’s features as long as possible. In The Guardian, I would later read: “Blyton always acknowledged that the tomboy George was based on a "real person, now grown up.” Herself. 

I looked at my passport and read my given name to myself. Who was she, this person? It felt like she was missing. Rebecca Evelyn Maria. Had I ever been her? And when? And in which circumstances? Which phase of my life? 

I scrolled through my phone and looked at old photos. My first communion. A vacation in France when we were kids. Playing violin. Moving to New York. Moving to Vienna. Celebrating my dad’s birthday. I look at these old photos in order to find her, and sometimes, I can see glimpses of her. When she is going to church with her family, when she is playing violin and trying - so hard - to be good. A good girl. When she is trying to be like everyone else, wearing that dress that her mother picked, and later getting a 9-5 job she eventually abandons. But most of the time, she’s not visible to me. Instead, I see someone trying to be her, failing, trying harder, failing again, trying again and again and again. Then, suddenly, everything comes to a halt, and she is gone. Was she too exhausted to try? Had she given up? All of a sudden, she seemed to have disappeared.  

I was slowly starting to see that I needed to fulfill my own expectations, even if, for the most part, I had no idea what these were. I knew I didn't want those three names anymore. I wanted to be Becks. 

For me, being bisexual always meant holding two truths: to be attracted to the same and different genders. Choosing a more gender-neutral name for myself makes sense of the ambiguity I feel in my life. 

Everyone changes, but our names remain static. An anchor. Most of us are pushing through life with a name (and a vision) attached to us that we might long have outgrown. How strange is it that our parents decide this huge part of who we will be and how the world will see us? Not for a few years, but for all of our lives, for 60, 70, 80, 90 years? Giving a child a name is the first instance in which parents exert their power over a child. It is an assumption, a promise, an obligation. Why don’t we think about the name we want to give ourselves? And who would we be without our birth names?  

The sun was getting brighter, and my bird’s nest on the balcony was getting unbearably hot. I finished my Instagram post and pressed send. A minute later, there were likes and comments, and people called my decision “courageous” and “brave.” I didn’t feel brave. I felt uneasy. What was I thinking, believing I could change my own name? Changing the rules, breaking the boundaries that had been so carefully established throughout centuries, the usual rituals, and social traditions. Who was I asking other people to use a different name for me? 

There were a few comments from people telling me that it would be hard for them to deal with my name change. Did they really need to address me by a new name? I could relate to the difficulty of it. It was hard to adapt, to let go. It is hard when people grow, and situations transform. I thought, But isn’t it okay that it is hard?   

I got up from the reclining chair and stepped off the balcony. The bird’s nest, which had previously always felt detached from the world, had suddenly begun to feel too close to it. I switched off my phone and made coffee. I was unable to respond to any of these comments on my post and see people who approved or disapproved of my name change. This had to wait. 

I had tried out using the name “Becks” for many years at this point, whenever I was traveling to the US. Coffee shop employees would write “Becks” on a paper cup in big black letters. And sometimes they would spell it “Bex” or “Bexks” (or “Rex”). 

Becks felt new and exciting and, at the same time, weirdly familiar because there were people out there who were already calling me that. My brother would say: “Becks, you forgot your umbrella!” and come waving with an umbrella behind me. And then there were people - such as my brother’s fiancee, who had met me as “Becks” and never knew me as someone else. 

“Becks sounds like a champagne cork going off”, my sister Sarah said, when I called her. She was finishing her training as a therapist and had recently attended a weekend seminar where everyone could try out a new name if they wanted to. She told me that only one person did, and it stuck. Sarah was actually quite happy with her name, she told me, and found no need to change it.  

I was slowly starting to see that I needed to fulfill my own expectations, even if, for the most part, I had no idea what these were. I knew I didn't want those three names anymore. I wanted to be Becks. 

In the days and weeks after publishing my Instagram post, I had to tell people I changed my name over and over again. In an email to a company I was working with, I added a note informing everybody I was now going by “Becks.” I got no response. When I mentioned it in a call with a company that wanted to hire me for a keynote and had come to know me as “Rebecca,” they smiled and said nothing. People did not know how to respond to a name change. There was no established social protocol people could follow, like: “Congrats!” or “Sorry for your loss!” There was no language in place for what to say, no card that said “Congratulations on changing your name!” that people could sign and hand over.  

What is a name, actually? I read that in Aboriginal cultures, people don’t have fixed names. Instead, a kinship is expressed in what people call one another. You are someone’s son, daughter, aunt, or sister, and that is your name in a given circumstance. After changing my name, I realized how many of the nicknames I had with close friends expressed kinship, a certain relationship. Rebi or Rebinsky - from my childhood, Spatzi - with a friend from college. These were all different names, and all of them were an expression of a particular relationship, and responded to a specific context. I liked that a name could hold a relationship. Would my new name, would “Becks”, also hold a new relationship with myself? 

In Western Culture, our parents name us, and the name sticks. If it doesn’t feel quite right, then we spend most of our lives trying to fit into this name. Make it ours, what has been given to us. But after my dad passed away suddenly, I felt the name he and my mother had given me fading away. I didn’t see this right away, but it would crack through. Slowly, softly, then later, more and more. I found it to be one of the many ironies of life: that you could lose someone or something that you so dearly loved and that you felt a bond that could not be replaced, and yet, the same loss allowed you to let go of what would set you free. Losing my father, in the end, meant letting go of my old name, too. 

***

Just a couple of months after my name change announcement on Instagram, I went to see my friend Ida. When I arrived, Ida had made pesto with handfuls of fresh basil, pine nuts, olive oil. In addition, there were half-cut tomatoes that had been pickled and simmered in a pan to release their juices. Everything felt very fresh, peak summer. 

We were once roommates in Brooklyn and had kept in touch. When we talked about my name change, my friend told me, her superior at work,refused to call her “Ida”. 

“She always calls me ‘Katharina’,” my friend explained. “She said: ‘I don’t want to call you Ida.’” 

I was curling my fork in the thin spaghetti and was trying to get as much green pesto as possible. I had already forgotten that there was another name, a legal name, that belonged to my friend. 

“That’s not okay”, I said. 

“I told her I’m not Katharina, so we both resorted to her calling me ‘Mrs. Meyer’, while I address her with her first name.” 

I don’t want to call you Ida.

“That’s ridiculous!” I exclaimed. 

In Western Culture, our parents name us, and the name sticks. If it doesn’t feel quite right, then we spend most of our lives trying to fit into this name. Make it ours, what has been given to us. But after my dad passed away suddenly, I felt the name he and my mother had given me fading away.

In Excitable Speech, Judith Butler wrote about linguistic vulnerability, and I was thinking about how - refusing my friend her own name - was an act of violence, of not accepting her identity. Calling her by a legal name - one she only used when going to the bank or filling out forms for the gas company - her superior violated a context, my friend’s context. And wasn’t that an act of violence, wanting my friend to exist in her context only? 

I don’t want to call you Ida. 

In Excitable Speech, Judith Butler writes about linguistic vulnerability and survival: “‘Linguistic survival’ implies that a certain kind of surviving takes place in language.” 

What if finding a new language and a new name means we can survive - in a world that is determined to know who we should be? 

When I was back in Vienna, a new notebook arrived in the mail. I was using Moleskine books to write down any thoughts that appeared and wouldn’t go away, that were interesting or annoying or just there. In the name field on the second page, I wrote “Becks.” There was a new name now. 

One that I had chosen. Linguistic survival. 

A new name that I was determined to fill with my own expectations of who I would be.  

It felt invigorating.