When Your Name is not Your Name

BY KCY

I was thirty when I found out my last name wasn’t my father’s last name.

He didn’t tell me. I happened to find out when I accompanied him to a doctor’s appointment one day. When the nurse called out at name, he stood. I looked at him, wide-eyed. “Is that you, Dad?” He laughed and replied, “Of course.” Then he went into the appointment.

I sat there in the waiting room, in shock for thirty minutes. If that was his last name, then what was mine? Was it made up? It didn’t make sense to me.

Later that night, I asked to see his license. I stared at the name. His middle name was my last name and his last name was the name the nurse had called him during his doctor’s appointment that day.

“Dad,” I ventured, “why don’t we have the same last name?” He just shrugged and giggled which was his way of saying he wasn’t going to answer my question, not now or ever.

And I had a million of them. Why had my dad given me his middle name as my last name? Had my mom known the name she took when she married him wasn’t actually his last name? Why had he never told me?

I felt lost. Discovering that we didn’t have this connection was making me question if I really knew who I was. After all, I didn’t know where I came from. My last name wasn’t even real. Well, not that it wasn’t real…it just wasn’t my dad’s real one.

Some people don’t place any significance on names. Like my mom. After she and my dad divorced, she kept his last name (well, now I know, actually his middle name as her last). She thought it was an interesting last name, so she kept it. Most people change their names back to their maiden names after they get divorced as if to sever all ties, but my mom placed no importance on the name. She just kept it.

But names are important. Firsts and lasts. First names are associated with certain personas. We all think a guy named James is cool and a guy named Milton probably is a nerd (sorry, the Miltons of the world!). That’s why most of us agonize over naming our children. Because a name can determine the type of person a baby will become.

Last names are a little different. They tell the story of connection, of a family. It tells someone you belong to other people. That you are a part of something, a part of someone. If my father and I didn’t have the same last name, was I really a part of him?

My dad never explained to me why he didn’t give me his last name. Maybe he wanted a fresh start. Maybe he was hiding us. I won’t ever know.

I struggled with this for a few years. I even contemplated changing my last name to his real last name.

It wasn’t until I met my dad’s sister for the first time when I went back to Turkey that I felt more at ease. My aunt explained that during the times of the Ottomans, people did not have last names. It was only after Turkey became a republic, that people were told to choose a last name. Our family chose a name, my father’s last name.

I don’t know why I felt so much better after I heard this story. Maybe I was being foolish, thinking that perhaps my father didn’t feel a last name was important, like the Ottomans, and this is why he didn’t feel it was necessary to give me the same last name. Maybe.

I never changed my last name. I kept it. Because at the end of the day, that was who I’d always been and who I always wanted to be. And that was okay with me.