My dad named me Jenepher: J-E-N-E-P-H-E-R. I know of exactly one Jenepher in the world (Google agrees), and it\u2019s me. He didn\u2019t spell it that way to be different: he\u2019s an engineer, more focused on function than form. He just can\u2019t spell. He thought Jennifer was like Christopher.
I love my dad, but I mostly didn\u2019t love (certainly didn\u2019t appreciate) Jenepher with a PH. When I was young, I went by \u201cJeni\u201d (yeah, my dad probably came up with that spelling, too). We moved a lot, and even though it was easy enough for a new teacher in a new school to pronounce, I was always having to spell out my name and re-spell it. When I considered my name, I thought about how I was always correcting people. When anyone would ask me my name, I quickly learned to say, in one quick run-on sentence – \u201cJenepher. J. E. N. E. P\u2026\u201d By the time I got to \u201cP,\u201d they would stop and ask me to spell it again. Slowly. And I complied. Spelling out this weirdness. Again and again and again. It was a pain, but a small pain: I didn\u2019t think it was a burden to have a common name that was spelled funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t think it was very unique, though, either. And at seventeen in high school, I hated anything that was run-of-the-mill ordinary. A small aside: I eschewed the ordinary so much that I went 3,000 miles across the country to a small liberal arts college no one in my small town in Maine – including my guidance counselors – had ever heard of.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n As fortune would have it, my freshman roommate was also named Jennifer but spelled the usual way. Thus, college seemed a perfect opportunity to reinvent myself, killing two birds with one stone. Three birds, really. I wouldn\u2019t have to spell my name all the time. I wouldn’t get confused with my roommate. And I could rid myself of my run-of-the-mill, ordinary name – not in line with the unique, rebellious self I thought myself – forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started going by Allie, a diminutive form of my middle name, Alice. I’m named after my mom\u2019s best friend from childhood, who died of kidney disease years ago. I liked the idea of not being Jenepher anymore. I liked the thought of carrying her memory along, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast forward twenty or thirty years. I\u2019m trying to simplify my life, and the extra names are holding me up. I\u2019ve spent decades switching between two names and two personas – Jeni (to family and high school friends, as well as anyone official, like the IRS or the bank) and Allie (to everyone else). It seemed a nice way to separate distinct parts of my life, but it\u2019s a little disorienting, and adds a lot of complication to my life. For example, I have four variations of gmail, two Apple IDs, and three or four Facebook accounts, some of which I never, ever look at. It\u2019s hard to keep track of which email I\u2019ve used for which online sites (and having different login emails makes it impossible to use FastPass). And how awkward is it when someone asks my name, and I pause, wondering how they know me? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d like to go back to Jenepher and reclaim my uniqueness.<\/strong> I\u2019ve moved back to Maine, and Jeni is how most people there know me, so this is the time to do it. But I worry that that would be hard for my adult friends, and confusing for my kids. I\u2019m probably not giving them enough credit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I just need to decide to take that leap. It was so much easier to leap at 18. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But that’s another story.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A common name with a unique spelling wasn\u2019t different enough. Thus began my name-switching woes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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