A Name for Myself

I went to see a movie tonight at our Film Club called "Brideshead Revisited." I went to see it mainly because my son had changed his first name to Sebastian because of the book of the same name by Evelyn Waugh. He said many of his friends had told him that Sebastian in the book reminded them of him. I had read the book years ago because I wanted to understand him better. He hadn't confided much about his adult life to me. He also changed his middle and last names, but he never explained why.

Probably I had been his model for changing names. After I had separated from my husband and expected to divorce, I decided I wanted a new last name. To my surprise, I found out that changing one's name to any name is legal, as long as you don't use it for fraud. I felt giddy with the possibility of taking ANY name I wanted. I decided I wanted a name that sounded good with my first name, was easy to spell, had a meaning (at least to me), and was unusual. After spending my married years with a common last name that ran for pages in any U.S. phone book, I wanted a name that would stand out in any list. But what name out of an infinite number of names that fit those criteria did I want?

The last trip my husband, son, and I took together was to Kenya. I had dabbled with learning some Swahili for that trip, and returned with a Swahili dictionary. Where to start with all those words in the dictionary? I thought it would take me ages to land on a name I wanted from the swarm of black ink on those pages. But no! It was easy - perhaps fate led me to it. When someone asks you in Swahili "How are you?", the reply is usually "mzima." The "m" at the front shows that you are asking about a person. I knew that "mzima" would not work in western society, but I was drawn to the definition of "zima" which meant "whole or well."

Ah! In 1979, I was neither "whole" nor "well" because of my impending divorce. In truth, I felt less than half a person without my husband. And I certainly didn't feel "well" because I knew I was the one responsible for the divorce. I wanted to feel "whole" and "well," but I knew there would always be a "hole" in me without the man who had loved me since I was a teenager. The technical part of changing it wouldn't be difficult, but would I be able to grow into the name I chose for myself?

In most cultures, changing one's last name voluntarily is incomprehensible. It represents one's family roots. However, I felt I had not lost my roots, but rather gained an identity of my own. Zima, a word rather than a name in Swahili, is unusual and doesn't appear in any great number anywhere I've seen. People with a Czech background think I'm Czech because "zima" means winter in their language. There is a Zima Station in Siberia. And, of course, Zima beer (now no longer made)was popular years after I took that name. But Zima beer's popularity allowed me to buy a t-shirt and a cap with ZIMA printed on it.

In 1983, when I was making plans to become an immigrant in Israel, Zima was a name that made the person processing my application blush. Zima, with the pronunciation on the last syllable rather than the first, turned my simple name into such a dirty word that he wouldn't even tell me what it meant. He suggested I use a different spelling in Hebrew from that dirty word and strongly accent the first syllable. Interestingly, my last name never caused me any problem in Israel because my first name, Suellen, caught every Israeli's attention. Just about everyone in Israel was watching re-runs of the tv program, "Dallas." Sharing a name with a main character in "Dallas" was my claim to fame there.

The years, miles, and experiences since 1979 allowed me to grow into the wholeness and wellness of my name, Zima.