A Name Can Get You Killed Around Here

“When I get older I am changing my name,” Uriah proclaimed to me as we watched Michigan State football team mount a comeback against Georgia.

“Oh, really?” I asked.

“Yup,” he replied.

"What’re you going to change it to?” I wondered aloud to him.

He came back with something that sounded like “Uhmmm Zee….. Zeeee …. uh…. Zeke.”

Short for Ezekial, perhaps?

Maybe Uriah hadn’t really thought of it that much.... or that closely. Maybe I caught him off guard in wondering what his first choice of new last name would be. Maybe he just knew that Peckinpaugh was not cool.... nor normal.

Normal. Please God, for the love of all that is good, true, and beautiful do not name me something that stands out and gets me attention, especially cruel and invective attention that is unwanted. Heaven forbid my name ends up actually rhyming with some form of genitalia or gross bodily function, like vulva or scrotum.

I sympathized with Uriah. When I was just a boy I dreamt of one day changing my name. I used to dream of being named “Marty.” I know. Really, I did. My favourite Motocross Racer was Marty Smith and he had long hair and apparently quite a following amongst the ladies. Yeah, let me be Marty for a day. This 8 year-old boy is not as innocent and inexperienced as he looks. Come on over here and talk to ME, Ms. Honda of 1978.

Truly, I did. I knew exactly the place Uriah was coming from. Even if it stung a little at first to hear him say he wanted to change his name----which is the same as saying I don’t like the name I have and was given by you, or inherited from you---I did understand the apparent power and allure of a name other than the one we are given. What child hasn't wanted to change their name. Hell, Zen monks and priests do it all the time. You don't have to be "spiritual" or bent on "enlightenment" to want to change your name. You may just be seduced into believing that all the cruelty in the world is tied to the fact that your parents named you after your mole-faced Great Aunt. Mabel?? Really, Mabel??

If it were only that simple, though. If we could just call ourselves something new and change our existence. If we could just give ourselves a superhero name and begin saving the day. If we could only have the popular names, the above-average names, the attractive names, the wealthy names. Anything other than the name we have. Anything other than Peckinpaugh. God, Peckinpaugh?? Really, Dad??

When I was 21 and writing and recording music in an attempt to have it become my vocation in life I changed my name. I took on the proverbial "stage-name." Not one with the ring of a porn star or a stripper…. nor a glam-rocker from LA in the heydays of the 1980’s metal scene like Blackie Lawless, Nikki Sixx, or Rikki Rocket. I was not Titiana or William Hung. I merely dropped the Peckinpaugh and went with Zoe for a last name. David Zoe. That is who I was. That is who I thought I became. On the music I released and any of the promotion to do that is who I became: David Zoe.

It had meaning for me. It was significant. Zoe was chosen by me because of its being the Greek word for “Life.” I wanted to be newly animate and animated. It was a very soulful choice for me. I was, in a way, attempting to bring some “Life” to my life.

Of course a name change doesn’t always accomplish this as readily as choosing a name out of a hat. Not like a transplanted pig liver can, or a new love, or a dream. Changing my name didn’t really change me. It certainly didn’t change other people’s impressions of, or relations to, me either. I was not more famous or respected or noticeable. I was not more at peace inside. I was not suddenly free of all instances of anxiety about what this life is or is for, and how the fuck I am supposed to make my way through it without getting killed because I was cursed with the wrong name.

It was just a word. It is just a word. Sadly, though, they are words that can be deadly. Have the wrong name and it can literally get you killed. Whether humans have been Jewish or Irish or Latino or African-American---a name can really hurt. It identifies us as a specific member of a specifically targeted ethnic or religious group----or even as one who simply is “from that family”---the one that lives on the wrong-side of the tracks.

In the 1930’s my maternal Grandmother—who was born in Oklahoma and was Cherokee---moved to Michigan to run from both her name and her heritage. She, like so many others who have had to do so, left an area where she was boxed in because of her name and her race. She went North and passed for “white.” She was a relative success at it, too. No one caught on. Few of her friends knew she was Cherokee. She hid both her name and her heritage.

At what price, though. What is the price of us seeking exile from our identity, from our history, from our name? Do we end up running from who we are in running from our name? Isn’t there a history and a story to our names that is as much us as any Buddhist notion of emptiness is or New Age proclamation of our being "spiritual beings?" Isn’t it our name that connects us backwards in time---and forwards, for that matter—to our ancestors, our culture, our human roots?

Isn't it our name that gives us a sense of continuity? Isn't our name a testament to our lineage?

My own name change failed. I gave up pursuing music as a vocation---as most musicians end up doing! Yeah, I still played. I just realized the business of music was not where my passion was. Not to mention that I was not that good!

I didn’t quite know what I would do next. I drifted. I hung out in bookstores. I was looking for a new name…. a new identity, a new me…. a new dream. It really never occurred to me that I had the perfect name already, or that I embodied the perfect self. Caught up in the fever of everyone else is better, and infected with the virus of “I need to change,” the thought of already having or being what I needed to be most was as far from my thoughts as any thought could be.

Unbeknownst to me that was all about to change. This is how great life is. This is what can happen when we least expect it---actually, when we are expecting nothing at all.

One day in my late 20's, while returning a book at one of those bookstores I hung out at, I was required to fill out a “return form” with my name and address on it. In order to exchange the book I bought for another I had to tell the lady behind the counter my name. "Peckinpaugh," she said. "Really? That is your real name?"

"Yup," I said, matter-of-factly, “David Jon Peckinpaugh?"

"Wow," she went on, "that sounds just like the name of a distinguished writer or something.”