In a few days, I will travel to Paris, France! As the day of departure gets closer, French expressions are beginning to come to mind. One in particular is the expression for “My name is.” An actual translation is ” I call myself,” Je m’appelle is the answer to Comment appellez-vous? What do you call yourself? The first time I heard that interchange in my first French class, I was fascinated with the accuracy of the expression. because of being named by someone else, I call myself Eleanor. My parents, siblings call me Eleanor or Ellie. A now deceased friend called me Ndidi,which means patience, so I readily adopted that name as a pen name. After all, who wouldn’t want to be known as patience? My father called me Jack as a knickname. It was short for Jackrabbit, I suppose because of my high energy. We are all given names and titles to go with those names. But, what do we call ourselves, really? Who are we? What is a name that fits us? Shakespeare wrote, ” A rose is a rose. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” What is our essential name..the essence of our sweetness? Who do you call yourself?
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nine principles for joy 
When I first met you, I was introduced to you as Eleanor. Over the years of our friendship, you informed me of your African name, ‘Ndidi’. On rare occasion I addressed you by that name. I was fascinated by the vibration when releasing each letter from my tongue. Your mention of French reminds me of the 4 years I studied the language and culture of France. French taught me to appreciate English more because I had another language to compare and contrast it to. Also, fascinating was to learn that French terms are gender oriented. Interesting, that’s not the case with the English language. And whereas, we would say in English ‘the green house’, in French we say ‘la maison de verte’, ‘the house of green’. Although, I was given the name Gloria at birth a few years ago I was attracted to a Nigerian Ibo name I found on the internet, Adanna. I pronounce it with the accent on the first syllable, whereas, I’ve heard it also with the accent on the 2nd syllable. It means ‘father’s first born loving daughter’. My guess is there are many Adannas on the planet. My name Gloria, as you know, has a meaning with a very high calling, glory, majesty, among others. To live within the focus of the meaning of our names, I believe is our highest spiritual revelation. As Ndidi, patience. However, when I was being raised with my 6 siblings, my youngest brother and the 7th child in his toddler language attempted to mimic my brother who called me Glo-Glo. He would say DoeDoe. Finally and thankfully, he progressed to GoGo.
Correction: You were introduced to me as Eleanor. lol!!!