[Longest Year by Scott Holmes plays]
Hello, there. Welcome. My name is, well… complicated.
So, my name is spelled (typewriter) E – N – E – I – D – A. I’ve gotten uh-nigh-duh, uh-nee-duh, eeh-nigh-duh, Amanda one time for some reason, mostly I know the professor has landed on my name on the attendance sheet because of the long confused silence as they stare at E-N-E-I-D-A on the page. It’s a nightmare to navigate at Starbucks and the sandwich makers in The Hawk’s Nest don’t even try to pronounce it, they just know me as the one with the unpronounceable name and wave me over.
And truth be told, I can’t fully blame them. I know my name is complicated because I have gone by so many different versions of it.
If you ask my parents, my name is Eneida Giboyeaux. Eneida is my mom’s middle name, and that last name is the pronunciation my dad went by growing up in Puerto Rico. In its original Spanish pronunciation, my name is actually quite beautiful.
If you ask my siblings, cousins, or anyone else in my family, I’m Neidy. This one is more of a nickname but it’s still a version of my name and the one I’ve heard the most in my life. By the way, no one else is allowed to call me that.
On my first day of preschool, the teacher asked my mom what my name was. But she never needed to pronounce it for an English-speaking person before, at least, not in an official capacity—Eneida confuses people.
So my mom just said… Aneeda? And it was decided. I went by Aneeda all the way until the first day of high school, when I finally, proudly told the bus driver: My name is Anayda. I can’t believe it took me that long to realize there was an easier way to transfer Eneida into English sounds.
For the longest time, I hated that my name – the one thing a person really owns – had to change depending on the people in the room. Like putting on different masks all the time to the point where I couldn’t visualize my own face. To the point where, when someone asks, tell me about yourself, I’m like – which self?
[Music swells]
And you know how when you’re talking to yourself, as we all do, you sometimes use the third person? I can’t do that. All the different versions of me: Eneida, Neidy, Aneeda, Anayda, all belong to other people. I just say, hey, you, buffoon in the mirror, don’t forget to wash the dishes later.
I used to wish that my parents had named me something easy like my siblings, David, Leslie, or Joyce, but not anymore.
I’ve been to Puerto Rico two times in my life, once when I was six, once when I was eleven. My memories are a little hazy, but I will always vividly remember what nighttime in Puerto Rico sounded like.
[COQUI SOUNDS]
There’s this little frog native to Puerto Rico, like, the size of a penny, that sings throughout the whole night. Like the Carribbean’s special version of crickets. I’ve always associated the coqui with heritage, ancestry, an old earth I could inhabit for a while, where I could connect to my culture.
I learned recently that there’s a species of coqui called Eleutherodactylus eneidae, (ehlootherowdacktuhliss eneida) or coquí de Eneida. Eneida’s coqui.
It took me a long time to see that my name, my identity, has always been here. Apparently, its origins are Welsh, not Spanish, and derived from the name Enid, which is my sister’s middle name. And I’m not asking too much by insisting respect for who I am. But I also know, my name is not all that I am.
I’m an enneagram type 9, The Peacemaker. I like Star Wars, and video games, and Rom-Coms. I’m a Creative Writing and Publishing & Editing double major with a minor in Spanish Studies. I speak Spanish. I’m a talented singer if I do say so myself, I really like to draw. I hate the mornings and the cold. I don’t know how to ride a bike. My favorite sound in the world is the erhu. I think dragons and elemental magic are the coolest things to write about and I’m currently writing a novel about said things! My poetry chapbook was published on campus in 2020! I can and will go on rants about the following topics: politics in fictional worlds, Christianity, why Yoda was wrong about almost everything, D&D, pirates, absolutely Hozier, ask me to explain the plot of anything I’ve ever watched and I’ll do it for you – ranting is my favorite thing to do.
The point is, when your identity is marginalized you tend to forget that what makes you different is not the only thing that makes up who you are. These days, I’m not pressed about people stumbling over my name, it’s okay, language is complicated. And I know who I am, I love who I am.
So, hello, there. Welcome. You can call me Anayda.
[Longest year by Scott Holmes plays]