There is one name change that I have seen in my life, that I
have never gotten a solid answer of, or at least not an answer that I agree
with. My father, Henry Wesley Walters, changed his name, dropped his first
name, and now just goes by Wesley Walters. It’s obvious whenever anyone from
his childhood was calling or any of his family was calling because they would
ask for “Hank”. The thing about this, is that somewhere, I’m not even sure
where, he decides to drop his name, and go with just his middle name.
The tricky part about this, is that as far as I am able to
understand, he never officially changed it. He never went through the steps,
going to the legal offices, or doing anything like that, to actually change
what he was supposed to be called legally. He just stopped writing Henry on
things, and started to write Wesley all over the place and slowly it’s started
to change. Legal documents, and even church records, still show him with his
full name, but the majority of everything else, shows him with his new name.
That’s part of the confusion with all of this because it wasn’t like he got rid
of the old name, he still has it. He still has the old name that he didn’t
like, but he only has it in super formal, not your every day settings where you
have to use your full legal given name. If something asks for his legal given
name, out pops Henry, but if it’s just asking for what his name is, he’s
Wesley.
The annoying part about this is that as a kid I never
thought about it, so I never asked him. I always just thought that his name was
changed and it’s no big deal. He had a name when he was a kid, and then he grew
up and dropped that name, and now his name is Dad, so it changed a few times
and there’s nothing to really worry about. It was by the time that I was old
enough to start to understand that changing your name, but not even doing it
all the way, was a little weird, that I was already moving on to other things
and couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. The best answer that I’ve ever
gotten, which I still don’t think is a full answer because it just feels like
there’s something missing, is that he just didn’t like it. There was a point in
time that he decided that it just wasn’t a good name for him. I’m still not a
fan of that because I just know, somewhere deep in the story of my dad’s life,
that there’s more to it. There’s never a story that is that simple. I work with
students every day talking about how they need to add more details into their
writing and they are able to do better than what he gives me.
The worse part about this, is that because I’m me, and my
mind goes running a million miles an hour, especially when I’m bored and don’t
have much else better to do with my life, I start thinking of ‘better’ more
valid reasons that he would change his name. The tricky part about playing that
game is that it’s not a legal change. The tricky part about it is that he has
something like four or five versions of his name. He’s Henry, Hank, Wesley,
and/or Wes. Depending on who you are, how formal or informal your interactions
with him are, you get one of four different names, and only one of them is his
actual legal name!
My favorite theory, the one that makes most sense to me, si
that he ddn’t like something he became or did when he was a teenager (he made
the swap somewhere around college, I’m not even sure about when it happened)
and so to move on from that life, to show that he was a different person that
acted differently, he decided to go with the new name. That’s the one that
makes the most sense to me, besides the lame excuse of “I just didn’t like it,”
but if you’re trying to move on and/or get rid of a previous life with mistakes
in them, why in the world are you keeping it as part of who you are?
Let’s go with the worst case scenario here and say that he
really just didn’t like it. As lame of an excuse and a story as that is, let’s
assume that the name change really was that monotonous. Who does that? Who
thinks that the name that they were called by their parents while growing up,
the name that they identified with, the name that is who they are, just wasn’t
good enough? There has to be more of a story here! There has to be something in
his life that triggered him to make the swap, because I have never seen/met
someone who changed their name ‘just because’. There is always a reason. There
is always something that triggers it. There is always something better than the
person got bored being called a name their entire life by everyone around them,
and so they just decided to mix things up and swap it over just because the
first name wasn’t “good enough.”
As much as I wish I could get a solid answer, or at least a
full story, he’ll never tell me, so I have ot live with the fact that my dad
changed his name sometime around his 20’s, and that he’ll never tell me why. Or
at least he’ll never give me a reason that I actually believe, because ‘just
because’ is not a valid reason to do anything.
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