I’ve often contemplated taking on a pseudonym–or at least a pseudo-pseudonym.
Maybe I don’t want people to know whether I’m a guy or a girl. Enter the pseudonym “Bek Menter”. It’s unusual, yes, but definitely more masculine than feminine. It’d work great if I wanted to be a professor or something. That’s been my thought, anyway.
Of course, I’m already representing myself online by the pseudonymous “bekahcubed”. Admittedly, that’s less of a pseudonym than a nickname–the name my father gave me to shorten the “bekah bekah bekah” I’d been calling myself. But that is a blogger identity, a journal blogger identity no less.
But what if I don’t really want to be a professor or something? What if I’m not sure journal blogging is all I want?
If I’m to be a serious writer, a thinker, I should have a thinker’s pseudonym. In this case, I would do well to take the cue of a thousand thinkers before me and go by my first and middle initial. Think about it. C.S. Lewis, R.C. Sproul, G.K. Chesterton, C.J. Mahaney, J.I. Packer, A.W. Tozer, C.H. Spurgeon–the list goes on and on. Yes, if I’m to be a serious thinker, R.M. Menter must be my moniker.
But that’s where the difficulty comes in. What do we actually know all these fellows as? We refer to them as Lewis, Sproul, Chesterton, Mahaney. And I don’t want to be Menter.
I was born a Menter and I’m proud to be a Menter. Our family took three generations to come up with sons–and two Menter women retained their names while their husbands took on the Menter name. But now that Menters have found out how to have boys, there are plenty to keep the name alive. I have four brothers and nine male Menter cousins. They can carry on the Menter name for posterity.
My aunt kept her name–and that’s just fine. My great-aunt died still a Menter. I know not the fates of the generations of Menter women before (apart from the two illustrious women who kept their names in Germany to keep the family line going.) I, however, would rather not keep the Menter name. I’d rather surrender it to be a missus, to be known by new name, to build another lineage.
I want a new name. I’ve toyed with Bek Menter, with bekahcubed. But now I feel the need for a new name. RM Menter, unfortunately, is not going to cut it. And I fear that taking on a true pseudonym will not satisfy me either.
Because I fear that all my name play, my pseudonymous jangling, is less a longing for a new name alone but a longing for a new life. A life where my role is wife. A life where my role is mother. A life where I proudly bear the name “Mrs. Blankety-Blank”.