What's In A Name?

This is the story of the relationship I have with my name.

Somewhat self indulgent yes, but living in a hostel I am introducing myself on an almost daily basis and often have to follow up with an explanation that no, Dominique is not a traditional Irish name, it's French and no, I am not part French. Furthermore, some French people around the hostel have tainted my family nickname of Neeks by informing me that it is a dirty word in French and telling jokes that play on the whole name of Dominique. As such, recently I have been thinking a lot about my name and one of the conclusions all this name pondering has brought me to is that names are complicated.

New parents can spend months agonising over what to name the new addition to their family, wanting to find a name that they like or that means something special to them. You also hear stories about parents who wait until the infant is born before making that final decision, wanting to make sure the name 'fits' the child in an attempt to personalise it. But when it comes down to it, how personal can a name get? How many hundreds of thousands of other people have that exact name? In a way, there is almost some vague logic to the ridiculous celebrity baby name madness – do they just want to give their child as unique of a name as possible? (Even if this does come at the cost of potential playground teasing for the Apples, Blankets and Suris of this world...then again what do they care when they can gallop past the would be teasers on their pony?)

Specially made 'Dominique' shirt. Looking fly.

Dominique is a perfectly normal, non-made up name that is meant for people and yet growing up in West Belfast I might as well have introduced myself as Jermajesty for the reactions it evoked. I always had to repeat my name, kids on my street struggled to say it and no-one in my primary school class had the foggiest idea how to spell it. I was often informed “that's a boys name” when the Belfast accent butchered Dominique to become Dominic and as a result, a significant amount of people just called me that (often including my own grandfather). Sure it was cool to have the interesting name which stood out in a sea of Ciaras and Siobhans in the Glen Road camogie circles I rolled in but everyone hits that age when all they want to do is fit in and having an obscure French name makes that difficult from the outset. The there was that blasted song. You know the one. With the nun singing my name and taking cruel liberties with the syllables and adding “anoooh” ones. I was tortured by that song. Resultantly, I had serious problems with my name and I blamed my mother, swearing that her grandchildren would be Bob and Jane.

When I started secondary school I was eager to leave my by then tiresome name behind so I tried out a variety of nicknames, the first of which was Dee. Simple, to the point, I liked it but it never really caught on past my closest circle of friends and even they largely used it in notes or texts rather than when speaking to me. Then my cousin Laura started calling me Nicki which for some reason I loved but could never decide how to spell which made me seem a little schizophrenic; one day I would identify myself as Nikki before Niqui dropped by for some confusion correspondence. This one still pops up occasionally but was largely a write off. The only consistent nicknames I was known by in these early years were Neekers or Neeks, my family's terms of endearment. While perfectly happy with these, they also had their problems as 'hilarious' cousins were quick to change Neekers to Knickers and then laugh at their own wit and cleverness for calling me a type of underwear. And yet it continued – people were encouraged to play around with my name. There was only one nickname I could not stand: Dom.

I just hated the sound of it and refused to be called it.“Dom.” Dom. DOM. Dominique was considerably preferable. Anyone who called me Dom promptly received a verbal cease and desist order which was strictly enforced (or they were just ignored until they were capable of using my full name) and this continued until I was in my 2^nd year of university.

Scoop - The 1st people to get away with calling me Dom.

Everyone I knew in Manchester called me Dominique (except when referring to me in texts in which case I was simply known as 'Irish') until I started working at Scoop. I definitely started off as Dominique but then slowly, people started calling me Dom. I must have let it slide the first few times for whatever reason because it spread like wildfire and suddenly I was no longer Dominique. When I took a stand and explained to my co-workers that I much preferred Dominique, they informed me it was too late and continued to shorten my name. One girl even went so far as to call me “Dom Dom.” I was having none of it “Add 'inique' if you feel compelled to add more syllables to my name!” I snapped. “Oh, but please, I love it!” “Well I don't.” Surely it was more important that I, the owner of the name, loved it? But still, I came to grudgingly accept being called Dom and when I forced my university friends to socialise with my Scoop friends, the university pals found the idea of calling me Dom hilarious and told the Scoopers this. “But what do you call her?” “Dominique.” “Oh.”

Now lots of people know me as Dom which is madness considering no-one dared to utter that single syllable for close to the first 20 years of my life. I was often called Dom when working in Hanoi but not consistently, the City Picnic crew in Belfast rarely used my full name (there was another attempt at Dom Dom there that had to be swiftly stamped out) and simply everyone I know in Melbourne both from my hostel and work calls me Dom exclusively. How did this happen?! I can assure you I did not introduce myself to any of these people as Dom. It has even got to the point where someone asked me “Do you mind being called Dominique?” only to be confused when I said I preferred it.

The rapping vagabond.

There have been other incarnations of my name over the years, but mainly used in good fun rather than in a 'we are seriously going to call you this' way e.g. condom, dominatrix or just singing the Mission Impossible theme tune with the syllable 'dom.' In my final year of university, the boys started calling me Mo'nique, which I liked to think of as my ghetto alter ego. For a brief period I was even called Betty. But there have been fun moments with Dominique as well – my friends in Belfast went through a phase of circling me and chanting my name just because it was a fun name to chant. On my 21^st birthday, on the drunken bus home I was introduced to a vagabond (for some reason or the other) who began rapping about my name. I doubt these things would have happened if I was in fact a Jane. (No offence to any Janes, I happen to really love the name - much to my mother's despair). 

So that is the story of me and my name (went on for a while, didn't it?) Our relationship has been pretty rocky at times but at least we have had a relationship, I am sure there are many people out there who have never given their names a second thought. There may have been rough patches but we are good now, I like my name (and a decent amount of its variations), it feels personal and I do not think I would suit another. In all the reactions to my name I've never heard “Oh...you don't look like a Dominique” so my mother must have been onto something. And as she says I should count myself lucky – I came pretty close to being Shaharazad.