A rose by any other name...

Brilliants,

I read an article that I am sharing with you because it is a subject close to my heart. The Bard (Shakespeare, or whatever else you would like to refer to him as) famously said "That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet", which is logical in that the name doesn't change the thing referred to (the signifier is not the signified).

But we know that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that what we call something not only reflects but changes attitudes towards it - the most powerful example I can think of recently is whether we refer to refugees (victims in need of rescue) or migrants (people choosing to move to seek out better conditions). If you hear about them as 'migrants' all the time, you start to think of them coming 'over here' as their choice.

This brings me to our most personal signifier: our own name. This proper noun is chosen for us, often before we are even born and it can, for our parents, have sentimental value or emotional resonance of another kind. They might take our need to have a nice-sounding, manageable, modern, un-rhyming name into account or they might not.

My mum was named Ada and swapped it as soon as she could for her second name Alex(ine). When she named me, she wanted me to have a link with my Syrian heritage and she liked the name Halla because it means corona - the halo around the sun (although I have heard other translations from Arabic). She gave me the second name Lisa so that I could swap it if I chose.

I have only ever met one Halla in person in my life, although I am facebook friends with two more 'Halla Williams'es, one of whom has a child almost the same age as mine. The one I met turned up at Bandaoke where I usually sang 'Everywhere' by Fleetwood Mac as one of my songs and she gave me the wierdest experience of seeing a Halla introduced on stage to sing Everywhere... that wasn't me.

When I introduce myself, more people nowadays have practice at repeating back names they have never heard before as we are culturally more and more diverse. But I grew up in a predominantly white, conservative area and people there couldn't get a handle on my name.

I have answered to Hannah, Hayley, Anna, Laura even. And had my name pronounced Harla, Halar, Hilla and, by my PE teacher, Hula. I don't mind. I smell pretty sweet either way but it is, as this writer says, annoying to have to repeat yourself and knowing that, even once they get it right, most people will forget for next time. I used to say Halla as in Valhalla but, when I went to university, a whole group of people ended up calling me Val, so that didn't work. Hannah but with Ls? I end up getting sent emails addressed to Hallah.

We change our names for various resons - I didn't have to change mine to get an Equity card when I was an actor as my name is, fortunately, uncommon enough, but many actors do. Authors often have pen names, bloggers have online identities, but the most common reason seems to be to more fully represent who you are. I have never liked my name shortened and have never considered swapping it. I've never embraced a nickname (I stopped my mum referring to me as Twiglet when I was a teenager and have never looked back). But I know quite a few people who have completely changed their name, sometimes after a trauma but often as some other kind of fresh beginning.

I wouldn't know what to choose - what a strange adventure it must be, deciding for yourself your own signifier - and how much better you would know yourself after such a journey. It's maybe going deeper than I can imagine into my own psyche. What would I want my name to say about me?

I'm happy with my name, despite the practical difficulties, and, whether you pronounce it HallA or HallUH, or just something in the general region, I'm happy to answer. I often even answer to 'hello' by accident.

Let's just make sure that, whatever we call people, we do it with respect for who they are and a hope to connect rather than dismiss or pidgeonhole each other. Stephen Fry one said the holocaust was made possible by using dehumanising language about Jewish people and it reinforces the ideas in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The signifiers are important when they carry messages about the signified. Let's just try and be aware of the language we use and remember that if you call someone something with negative connotations often enough, some people will start to believe it. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will change the way I am percieved and that may certainly hurt me.