Episode 13 – What’s in My Name
For immigrants settling in the U.S. from non-English speaking countries, names present a challenge. What might be a perfectly common, easily pronounceable name in someone’s country of origin, is often alien and unpronounceable by English speaking Americans. If you were lucky, your name might be a version of a name familiar to English speakers, in which case many immigrants would, in the 1970s, simply adopt the Anglicized version. This way, the Russian Andrey would become Andrew, the Russian Elizaveta would become Elizabeth, etc.
Everyone in my family had a name that was easily Anglicized or Americanized. My mother went from Anna pronounced Ahn-nah (emphasis on the double n) to Anna pronounced A-nuh, though to my dad she was always Anya (or Anechka when he was feeling either particularly affectionate or particularly sarcastic). My father’s name, Eduard, easily morphed into Edward, but he was always called Edeek by my mom (Edechka if she was feeling super affectionate or super sarcastic). My brother went from Daniil, pronounced Dah-nee-eel, to Daniel, but we all called him Danny. Well, my parents continued to call him Danya or Dahnichka with no sarcasm, just affection, and I called him Dum-Dum, but that’s just big sister stuff.
Also, Russians do not have middle names. They have patronymics, which are variations of the person’s father’s first name with a suffix that means either “son of” or “daughter of,” like the Celtic Mc, Mac, or O’, the Germanic Fitz, or the Nordic sen or son, but harder to pronounce. My mother’s patronymic was Semyonochva, or daughter of Semyon (Simon). My father’s patronymic was Moiseevich, or son of Moisey (Moses). My patronymic was, of course, Eduardovna, and my brother’s was Eduardovich.
That brings me to my first name. I am named Alla, pronounced Ahl-lah, with an emphasis on the double l. I was named after my grandfather’s youngest brother, who died sometime at the beginning of World War II. His name had been Alter, pronounced Ahl-ter, with the rolled r at the end. The affectionate versions of Alla are Allochka or Alyona, and there is also a sort of friendly and casual version, Alka. There are also friendly, casual Anka, Edka, and Danka for my mother’s, father’s, and brother’s names, respectively. There is absolutely no way to Anglicize or Americanize my name. The most that could be changed is to remove the emphasis on the double l and pronounce my name Ah-luh, instead of Ahl-lah. So, that happened.
My classmates attempted all kinds of jokey puns on my name, such as Ah-love-you, Ahl-be-back, and the ever-popular Ah-la-la. My sister-in-law has called me La-la for almost 40 years now, and her children sometimes call me Aunt Alla and sometimes Auntie La. In high school, some of the kids recognized the superficial similarity of my name to the word for God in Arabic, and for four years I endured friendly mock hand folding and bowing in the halls.
As part of the naturalization process, by which immigrants and refugees become American citizens, our names had to be recorded. For my parents, there were their green cards, which allowed them to live in the U.S. as “legal aliens,” and which would, after five years, make them eligible for naturalization and becoming citizens. There were also driver’s licenses and all kinds of accounts and contracts with utility companies, phone company, etc. For us kids, there were school records, to start.
All this meant that we had to decide how our names would be written and pronounced for the rest of our lives here in the U.S., and this included doing something about middle names. For the male members of the family, this was a fairly straightforward proposition. My father simply adopted the English version of his father’s name as his middle name, and my brother did the same with the English version of our father’s name. Thus, they became Edward Moses and Daniel Edward.
My mom’s situation was a bit more complicated. Her father’s name was Semyon, Simon in English. Had she known enough or asked someone who knew, she could have become Anna Simone, using the feminine version of her father’s name as her middle name. But she didn’t. So, in order to have a middle name that at least began with the same letter as her father’s name, she chose Sue. Not Suzanne, just Sue. So, instead of the elegant Anna Simone or the equally elegant Anna Suzanne, she became the rather rural-sounding Anna Sue. Though, come to think of it, Anna Suzanna would have been pretty funny.
I had a different problem still. There was no easy way to feminize my father’s name for use as my middle name. There were Edna and Edwina, but those was non-starters, as far as I was concerned. The prospect of being Alla Edna or Alla Edwina made me shiver with existential dread. It was bad enough to have a weird first name at a time in my life when assimilating and being “normal” was all-important. To add to this name either of these uncommon middle names was unthinkable. So, I looked elsewhere for a middle name — my grandmothers.
My paternal grandmother’s name was Faina, Fanny in English. Nope! My maternal grandmother’s name was Mira, a version of Miriam or Mary. Neither of those sounded great when paired with my first name. Then, someone suggested that I use another version of Miriam– Marie– and that’s what I ended up choosing. Do I love being Alla Marie? Not particularly. But I liked it more than the other options, so there we have it. Most importantly, Marie was a common and easily pronounced name.
But what I really wanted was to have an “American” name, like Laura or Diana. My classes were filled with Stephanies, Lisas, Kellys, Karens, and Lindas. More than anything else, I wanted to be one of them. I felt that there was already so much about me that was different! Was an easy, pretty, American-sounding name so much to ask for? It seemed patently unfair that my parents could become Anna and Ed, and my brother got to be Danny or Dan, and I was stuck with Alla. Changing my first name wasn’t an option. So, Alla I was, and Alla I would continue to be.
As a name in Russia, mine was not super common, but certainly recognizable and not worthy of question or comment. But as a teenager in the U.S., I was frequently asked about it. I knew that I had been named after a great-uncle I had never known, but his name, Alter, would raise many additional questions, so I never bothered to try explaining my name that way. Somewhere I had read that Alla was a derivative of Aleksandra, so I used that explanation for many years. Google results today say the name Alla comes from Russian or Ukranian and translates to ascend or go up, or other or different, or that it’s short for Aleksandra or Alice, or that it’s a name of unknown origin. That last one is my current favorite. For the record, the words for ascend or go up in Russian bear absolutely no resemblance to Alla.
Wherever my name comes from, and whatever it actually means, it remains a fairly uncommon one in the general American population. According to the 2010 census records, my name was 47,006th in popularity as a baby name, and there were fewer than 500 women named Alla in the U.S. at that time. I can’t imagine that there are many more of us today. So, maybe the other or different meaning is the right one, after all.
Oddly enough, in my own extended family, I’m one of two Allas, as my cousin, born four months before me, shares that name. There are also two Natalies and two Alexanders. We’re not an imaginative family, when it comes to names.
The story I was always told was that my grandfather, my mother’s father, requested (demanded?) that his first grandchild be named after his younger brother, Alter. I suppose I should be grateful that I was not born male. My aunt, my father’s sister, gave birth to her first child, a daughter, in June of 1964, and named her Alla. Did she know that my parents were obligated to use that name only a few months hence, regardless of the coming baby’s gender? No idea. She had the right to use whatever name she wanted, and she wanted that one. When I arrived at the end of October and was discovered to be female, my grandfather insisted that I be named Alla, duplication be damned! My parents tried to protest, but my grandfather declared that if any other name was given to me, he would never set foot in my parents’ house again, and that was that.
So, I will never see my name on anything at an airport gift shop. Nor is it likely that I will ever hear a song with my name in the title (and no, Layla doesn’t count). And I will always have the problem of trying to introduce myself to anyone in person. Every time I hold out my hand and say something like, “Hi! I’m Alla,” I will always get a confused look, a shake of the head, or an “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?” My name will perpetually be mispronounced as Ayla, Ella, Paula, Allie, Alice, and Alma. If I introduce myself with my full name, people will think I’m Allareese, an interesting name, but not quite right either. But that’s ok. I’ve made peace with my name of unknown origin. We’ve been through some stuff together, and I think I’ll keep it a while longer.
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