NAMES/NOMBRES
By Julia Alvarez
When we arrived in New York
City, our names changed almost immediately. At Immigration, the officer asked
my father, Mister Elbures, if he had anything to declare. My father shook his
head no, and we were waved through. I was too afraid we wouldn’t be let in if I
corrected the man’s punctuation, but I said our name to myself, opening my
mouth wide for the organ blast of a. trilling my tongue for the drumroll of the
r, All-vabrrr-es! How could anyone get Elbures out of that orchestra of sound?
At the hotel my mother was Missus Alburest, and I was little girl, as in, “Hey,
little girl, stop riding the elevator up and down. It’s not a toy.” We moved
into our new apartment building, the super called my father Mister Alberase,
and the neighbors who became mother’s friends pronounced her name Jewlee-ah
instead of Hoo-lee-ah. I, her namesake, was known as Hoo-lee-tah at home. But
at school I was Judy or Judith, and once an English teacher mistook me for
Juliet. It took me a while to get used to my new names. I wondered if I
shouldn’t correct my teachers and new friends. But my mother argued that it
didn’t matter. “You know what your friend Shakespeare said, ‘A rose by any
other name would smell as sweet’.” My family had gotten into the habit of
calling any famous author “my friend” because I had begun to write poems and
stories in English class. By the time I was in high school, I was a popular
kid, and it showed in my name. Friends called me Jules or Hey Jude, and once a
group of troublemaking friends my mother forbade me to hang out with called me
Alcatraz. I was Hoo-lee-tah only to Mami and Papi and uncles and aunts who came
over to eat sancocho on Sunday afternoons old world folk whom I would just as
soon go back to where they came from and leave me to pursue whatever mischief I
wanted to in America. JUDY ALCATRAZ, the name on the “Wanted” poster would
read. Who would ever trace her to me? My older sister had the hardest time
getting an American name for herself because Mauricia did not translate into
English. Ironically, although she had the most foreign-sounding name, she and I
were the Americans in the family. We had been born in New York City when our
parents had first tried immigration and then gone back “home,” too homesick to
stay. My mother often told the story of how she had almost changed my sister’s
name in the hospital. After the delivery, Mami and some other new mothers were
cooing over their new baby sons and daughters and exchanging names and weights
and delivery stories. My mother was embarrassed among the Sallys and Janes and
Georges and Johns to reveal the rich, noisy name of Mauricia, so when her turn
came to brag, she gave her baby’s name as Maureen. “Why’d ya give her an Irish
name with so many pretty Spanish names to choose from?” one of the women asked.
My mother blushed and admitted her baby’s real name to the group. Her
motherin-law had recently died, she apologized, and her husband had insisted
that the first daughter be named after his mother, Mauran. My mother thought it
the ugliest name she had ever heard, and she talked my father into what she
believed was an improvement, a combination of Mauran and her own mother’s name,
Felicia. “Her name is Mao-ree-shee-ah,” my mother said to the group of women.
“Why, that’s a beautiful name,” the new mothers cried. “Moor-ee-sha,
Moor-eesha,” they cooed into the pink blanket. Moor-ee-sha it was when we
returned to the States eleven years later. Sometimes American tongues found
even that mispronunciation tough to say and called her Maria or Marsha or Maudy
from her nickname Maury. I pitied her. What an awful name to have to transport
across borders! My little sister, Ana, had the easiest time of all. She was
plain Anne-that is, only her name was plain, for she turned out to be the pale,
blond “American beauty” in the family. The only Hispanic thing about her was
the affectionate nicknames her boyfriends sometimes gave her. Anita, or, as one
goofy guy used to sing to her to the tune of the banana advertisement Anita
Banana. Later, during her college years in the late sixties, there was a push
to pronounce Third World names correctly. I remember calling her long distance
at her group house and a roommate answering. “Can I speak to Ana?” I asked,
pronouncing her name the American way. “Ana?” The man’s voice hesitated. “Oh!
You must mean Ah-nah!” Our first few years in the States, though, ethnicity was
not yet “in.” Those were the blond, blue-eyed, bobby-sock years of junior high
and high school before the sixties ushered in peasant blouses, hoop earrings,
serapes. My initial desire to be known by my correct Dominican name faded. I
just wanted to be Judy and merge with the Sallys and the Janes in my class.
But, inevitably, my accent and coloring gave me away. “So where are you from,
Judy?” “New York,” I told my classmates. After all, I had been born blocks away
at Columbia- Presbyterian Hospital. “I mean, originally.” “From the Caribbean,”
I answered vaguely, for if I specified, no one was quite sure on what continent
our island was located. “Really? I’ve been to Bermuda. We went last April for
spring vacation. I got the worst sunburn! So, are you from Portoriko?”
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