As you know, dear readers, “Mith” is not actually my “real” first name — it’s not the name that I was given by my parents way back when in the fall of ’89.

I’m not going to talk about my “real” first name. It doesn’t suit me — never has. Its vibe, its sound, its style, even its meaning (nay, especially its meaning) — nothing about it is me. And I wonder if this doesn’t have something to do with the way I’ve always felt so not at home in my own skin, so at odds with myself, so insecure about who I essentially am.

It’s not a bad name. It’s actually very pretty, and I like it, especially because it’s a family name going back several generations on my mother’s side. However, it has a serious issue that’s been a significant problem for me my entire life. And that issue is: pronunciation.

Where my mom’s family’s from, it’s pronounced one way; the vast majority of America pronounces it a different way; but neither of these are actually the “correct” pronunciation; but the differences between the three are subtle enough, that it remains vague and inconclusive what’s the right or wrong way to say it. The sound in question is a single syllable, a vowel sound. All the different versions are shades on a spectrum.

(By now, I bet you can guess what the name is.)

So, ever since I started kindergarten, I have not known how to say my own name. Which was very jarring, to a five-year-old. “Why does everybody say my name wrong?” But not wrong enough for me to correct them, because it was clearly me that they were addressing, and the difference was subtle — just wrong enough to tweak a nerve.

To this day, if I say it the way my parents say it, people get confused and think I’m saying a different name. “Can you spell that for me?” If I say it the way most of America says it, it just feels gross and wrong; it feels like I have a whole unpeeled tangerine in my mouth; I feel like I’m lying, giving a fake name (and my discomfiture must be evident, because people still ask me to repeat myself and/or spell it out; and this is a really common name). And the “correct” pronunciation? It just feels unnatural to me, like trying to achieve a very delicate balance, like trying to speak a foreign language — I literally have to rehearse it under my breath a few times before saying it out loud.

So at thirty-six I still hate introducing myself. I never know how to say it, just like I don’t know how to say much of anything coherent in social situations. Hello, I am a person, but which exactly I can’t really say, and I don’t know how to convey the fact of this person to you because I don’t really grasp it myself. Perhaps thus began my obsession with communication, with attempting to make my thoughts understood through writing.

I do know, however, that whenever a stranger meets me and pronounces my name the way my parents always said it, I automatically, subconsciously warm to that person, and presume that they are Nice and Good. Which might be a sign that maybe I should just buckle down and own this as my pronunciation. This is the way I say it. People do that with all kinds of names nowadays, don’t they? “It’s spelled Jane but I pronounce it jah-NAY! Get it right!” If people can get away with random stuff like that, surely I’d be perfectly justified in insisting upon my preferred vowel sound, in a name that can legitimately be pronounced any of several ways! Maybe I should have done this all along, starting in kindergarten!

But I’ve never had the guts. I’ve always let other people tell me, I guess. And now it’s way too late, even if I suddenly miraculously developed the guts to assert my will like that, which I haven’t yet and don’t expect I ever will.

Which is not even that big a deal, frankly. Virtually everyone, even my number one person, my beloved husband, pronounces it the “wrong” way. And it’s not like it bothers me. I don’t even think about it ninety-nine percent of the time. It’s just a fact of life.

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Do you like how I said “I’m not going to talk about my ‘real’ name” and then proceeded to write all of that? Sorry. That was not the post that I intended to write. No, I came here to tell the origins of my “nom de plume”/ handle / alias / whatever you want to call it: my assumed name: Mith. In case you’re curious, kind reader. Here, at last, is the post that I came here to write:

It goes back a quarter century, to early 2001. I was eleven years old, and, like most kids do at some point, going through a “change my name” phase. Not in a serious way — as mentioned, I’ve tried, but never had the guts to tell other people what to call me — but just in a playful way, as a game with my little fifth grade friends. We all had pretend names. And mine, the name that I wanted to go by, was: you won’t believe this, but: Kim.

“Kim?! But why? That’s so not you, Mith!” I know. I didn’t have any ideas or prejudices about the name back then; I hadn’t yet heard of the Kardashians, or Eminem’s baby mama, or any of those Hollywood associations. I just heard the name somewhere and liked it. I liked the way it sounded. I liked that it was easy to say, impossible to mispronounce. Best of all, I liked that it rhymed with “Zim,” as I was, at the time, intensely obsessed with Invader Zim (not just the show, but Zim the character; I saw him as my soul mate or something). So the name Kim was totally meant to be, for me, as I saw it.

So that became my assumed name, for a year or so, even after the Zim obsession waned. It was the name I wished I had, the name I used in my self-insert fiction, the name I used in games with my little friends. You know how kids do.

Then it evolved. In sixth grade, I met the girl who would become my middle school BFF, and one of the main characters of my life story. (If she ever somehow stumbles upon this blog and sees this: hey girl, hope you’re doing well.) She and I were the same flavor of weird, back then; we had the same weird sense of humor, and were two weird peas in a pod. We became very close, and developed all manner of inside jokes — one of the most enduring of which was a secret “language” in which all words ended with the suffix “-ith” or “-eth.”

That was how, after approximately two years of being Kim, I became “Kimmith.” Which will forever be my full name in my heart.

But, among my little friend group, Kimmith was soon abbreviated to: Mith.

And that was what my friends called me, and what I began to call myself in my head, and it just stuck. Soon there were nicknames of the nickname: Mithius, Mithiana, and Mit were all things that I went by at some point. But Mith, that was the one that stuck. It became my online handle everywhere. When my little friends and I all got Livejournals, I thought I was being very clever indeed when I named mine “MiTHology.”

And I guess the rest is history.

In case you were wondering whence the “k”: I keep the “k” as a nod to the original full name. In my mind, it also stands for the name of my patron saint, Saint Kevin, whose name I was given at my Baptism in 2013. It’s like K is just my letter. It has to be there. I don’t know.

To have weird friends who are close enough to you, who have enough ownership of your life to bestow weird nicknames upon you: that is such a beautiful thing. I don’t miss school, not at all, but I do miss having a group of friends around me. Alas! Those days are long gone — but the name will remain forever.

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So what then even is a “real” name, then? Define real. Is it your legal name? Or the one you call yourself in your head? And which version of you is real: the one you are in the privacy of your own mind, or the one that other people see? Naming anything, especially a person, is such a complicated and daunting thing. Language being this thin barrier that we construct to mediate between our brains and the huge whirling vortex of unknowable chaos. How can we say what a thing, or a person, is?

At 36, I still sometimes think about changing my name. Maybe even to Kim. Or something else that’s easy to say. But for now, it’s satisfying enough to have this little online space where I have a bit more control over how you perceive me — where I get to tell you who I am, on my own terms. Where I get to name myself. Why else do we write things, right? If you’ve made it this far, thanks for being here, and for listening.

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