name

I’ve never liked my name. A name should say something true about a person, carry a hint of history, and if lucky be unique enough to separate you but not weird enough to destroy you. Monica is Spanish, Mexican, Italian: I am none of these. Although oddly, when I lived in Korea, more locals than not asked me if I was Brazilian. My skin had been darker than usual, just after a hot summer at the beach. My cousin Dave has gotten this too. So we’ve wondered: Could be some latin blood somewhere way back when in the times of seafaring and trading? My grandmother did have ten kids, so we know she was sleeping around a lot. Maybe there was a Brazilian milkman? Then when I visited Japan, people terrified me by invading my personal space with rapid Japanese conversation as if I should know what they were saying. Even when I go to Mitsuwa, our local Japanese market, the cashiers do the same. Perhaps there was a Japanese poolboy, too?

Choi is also a weird sounding name that sounds nothing like what it is in Korean, which sounds more like Che, as in Che Guevara the revolutionary. And maybe whoever the genius translator was had this concern in mind, this potential confusion with the revolutionary, and all of us would be detained every time we tried to bypass airport security. Well, thanks to the phonetically challenged name creator, I was teased horribly all my life: the Choi of cooking, the Choi of sex (thanks Dr. Ruth), Choi boy (when I had a god-awful buzz cut in the second grade), Choi boy-toy (the Madonna era, my best dating era).

There are only a handful of Korean last names, the majors being: Kim, Lee, Park, Han. These are the Smiths and Browns of Korea. So yes, it always annoyed the hell out of me, when someone would recognize my last name and say, “Oh, you say you’re a Choi. I know Mike Choi from grade school in Kansas. Do you know him?” Yes, I know all one hundred Mike Choi’s in the world and we are all related! This may actually be truer than my sarcasm wants to admit. In Korea, you were forbidden to marry anyone with the same last name since they trace back to the same original tribes. Which is maybe why the theme of unrequited love is so prevalent in their drama.

Was I relieved to change my name to Carter? Dear God, no. Because now I am a black woman in Mississippi, a published writer of urban Christian novels with enticing titles called “Sacrifice the One” with the cover a woman in prayer position and “Me, Myself, and HIM” with an even better cover of a man melodramatically caressing a woman wearing a revealing spaghetti strap tank top (both of their eyes are closed tightly). I thought Carter was such a white sounding name, probably because of President Jimmy (the only modern pres to not start a war), but it’s a more common black name from what I’ve found on name searches online.

A friend was trying to search me on Facebook and pointed out another Monica Carter who was also Asian, but younger than me. What are the odds? She even looked Korean - truly stranger than fiction. Why couldn’t I have a unique name like Zosia Mamet or Jemima Kirke? These girls would never have my identity crisis.

So Eric has known about my longing for a better name for years. He took me on a date to see the new Woody Allen movie, To Rome, With Love. He knows how much I love Woody Allen movies and it was a nice gesture to take me, when he prefers shoot ‘em up blood baths to the quirky character story. It wasn’t his best, but the storylines are funny enough to forgive the lack of cohesion. And Italy’s in the poorhouse, so it’s a good pick-me-up to the country that gave us pizza, Pavarotti, and Michelangelo.

In an early scene, Alec Baldwin is talking about Sally’s friend Monica who is visiting and he is warning the boyfriend that he will be tempted by her. He says, “Monica, she even has a hot name!” Eric’s eyes were on me here, because he had watched this scene in the previews and knew he had to take me just to hear that line. We both burst in laughter at the same time. Eric said, “Do you believe me now?”

So my name is a confusing mess, just like my identity, but at least Woody Allen, my husband, and maybe Alec Baldwin all think my first name is sexy. We can’t all be born to Pulitzer prize winning playwrights and end up a Zosia or a Jemima.

If I do write a book, what name would I use? I certainly can’t be Monica Carter, the Christian romance novelist!