When I was a senior in High School, my literature teacher assigned an essay: write about my name.
It felt silly. I’d only ever really considered the meaning of my name—Benjamin, “son of the right hand”—in the context of jokes. Like saying that the real position of honor in my family would be “son of the left ear”, since my dad can’t hear out of his right.
I never took it seriously; it seemed a fairly antiquated meaning based on a cultural value not really cared about anymore. No meaning to me.
I procrastinated on the essay, as I often would. The night before it was due, I finally sat down to write it.
In this moment of rushed work, I was forced to give the matter of my name some serious thought for the first time ever. In that time of reflection, I made some realizations.
My name is not just Benjamin. I have two names.
When I was born, my parents lived in a small town in northern Afghanistan.
Let’s look at that side of me for a little while.
My parents wanted a name for me that would hold a meaning in Farsi as well. “Benjamin” is remarkable in that regard—the Farsi transliteration, “Bin-e Amin”, means “Faithful Son” or “Righteous Son”, very similar to “Son of the Right Hand”. To the neighbors I was “Amin-jon”. (The “jon” suffix is an affectionate title, meaning “beloved”.)
Afghanistan holds many memories, for both me and my parents. It’s part of who I am. I played with a hatchet with a neighbor’s kids, then fell and hit my head on the blade. I drank tea in every neighbor’s home. I had two tortoises—“Rocky” and “Toughie”—who ate all the vegetables I tried to grow in our garden. Rocky once fell into the pit beneath our outhouse. Poor Rocky.
The mud brick walls of our house were home.
We left when I was six. Upon visiting again, a year later, the government had decided to widen and pave the road our house was on.
Half of my childhood home was a pile of rubble. Many of our neighbors were living in half of their original living space, with a tarp to replace the missing wall.
I’ve never been back.
But that’s a story for another day.
Next, we moved to Bangalore, India. By this time I had two younger brothers. Do you know, I didn’t know their names’ meanings until I looked them up? Timothy, according to Behind the Name, means “honoring God”. Peter—“rock”. We loved India, but for me it was never “home”. I don’t think I’ve ever really had “home” again—the only one I had was destroyed by “progress” and redeveloped into a block of concrete shops.
In India, I made my first lifelong friends. Some of them I still message with regularly.
When I was eleven, my parents’ reapplication for Indian visas were denied.
We moved again, to Malaysia.
Malaysia is where I really became who I am today. It’s the closest thing I’ve had to a home since Afghanistan. But it never gave me a name—that makes all the difference.
I shed the name “Amin” when I left Afghanistan. Forgot all about it, with occasional exceptions.
The essay I was assigned in my last year in Malaysia brought it all back to mind.
My first realization was this: “Amin” is every bit as much my name as “Benjamin”. Since then, I’ve been transitioning more and more toward using it. I’ve asked my parents to start calling me it again.
And do you know something? “Amin” sounds like home. It gives me a home, wherever it’s used.
Because this is my fundamental realization: names have power.
“What’s in a name?” the great bard asks. He maintains that no matter the name, objects have the same essence.
But they don’t, do they? Names have power. I have two names. Yet, both are the same name. It’s a duality of existence that sums up my whole personality as someone caught between cultures. Using a different one of my names is enough to return me to a place of comfort—to create new places of comfort.
And so, I’ve started asking people what their names are. What names they like to be called. And, most importantly, what their names mean.
Sometimes people might be wrong about what their names mean, at least in an objective sense. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is what names mean to the people who wear them. Why they wear them. Whether they wear them proudly as badges of honor or carelessly like simple identifiers.
A name is what you make it. Names are powerful, but only if you let them be.
What name do you have that makes you feel at home? What name creates the home you have? Perhaps it is a “nickname”.
Do you want to know something else? I also have two family names. My “middle” name is my mother’s maiden name. I bear the names of both of my families, the Barnards and the Hollons.
My names carry two cultures and two families. My names encapsulate who I am, the beautiful mix of ideas and people that blend to make the person I am and can be.
I am Benjamin Amin Barnard Hollon.
Who are you?
