Wednesday, January 28, 2015 // The Statement 
7B

L

ast month, I got coffee with my father. We stepped 
up to order, and I did what I always do when they 
ask for my name — I gave them a fake one. My dad 

did what he always does — he gave them a fake one too.

And then we looked at each other and laughed, just out 

of the sheer ridiculousness of it all — standing in a perfectly 
normal, incongruous Midwestern Starbucks at 1 p.m. on a 
Friday, ordering drinks using names that aren’t ours.

My name is Shoham. Sho-hom. It means onyx, like the 

rock. Like my father’s name, it comes from Hebrew, and like 
my father’s name, as I’ve discovered, there are about 1,000 
different ways to pronounce it in English, none of them quite 
correct.

A friend asked me recently if it felt like I was denying 

something about my identity when I didn’t fight for my 
name. I told him I didn’t know. I don’t remember when I 
stopped giving my name in situations when I didn’t have 
to. I come from a family of unpronounceable names, and it’s 
second nature to me at this point.

When I started college, I began to think about it again. 

A few weeks after meeting my roommate for the first time, 
we went out for lunch together. I, as I usually do, gave the 
person at the register the name Anne, my middle name. My 
roommate wasn’t really listening, but she caught it out of the 
corner of her ear and looked at me, both a little confused and 
distressed.

We’d only known each other for a few weeks, and she, to 

her credit, is both an incredibly nice person and someone 
who put genuine effort into learning my name without hav-
ing to ask. And so I explained, like I’ve done for a long time: 
It’s my middle name. My real name — Shoham, Sho-hom, s h 
o h a m — is too complicated to be scrawled on the side of an 
order or mangled by a Noodles and Co. employee, not worth 
my energy or time for a five-second interaction across the 
counter.

A name seems like such a small thing to think about, 

and it is. But it’s also a lifelong accumulation of hundreds 
of phone calls with secretaries, moments with friends and 
encounters with teachers, spelling out my name, explain-
ing how to pronounce my name, getting blank stares at my 
name, and that isn’t small.

A lot of my favorite moments are tied not to my full name, 

but to the nicknames people have built out of it over the past 
19 years. A series of sports coaches, calling out Sho’am down 
the field, in the stretch of time before my height advantage 
and accompanying goalie/basketball stardom faded.

The way people tend to find their way to Shosho, and how 

it sounds different from each one of them — my best friend at 
2 a.m. over the phone every night we spent studying senior 
year, my little sister when she’s feeling sassy. The group of 
friends I met over our sleep-deprived Welcome Week fresh-
man year who all call me Sho.

These names come with the person, the relationship, the 

territory, and I like all (read: most) of them because of that.

But I’ve never specifically offered these substitutes up 

when people struggle with my name, though I like (almost) 
all of them. I’ve never gone by Anne full time either, though I 
thought about it when I started high school, and again when 
I started college. I don’t fight for my name because it’s so 
very often not worth it, but I have stuck by it.

When I come home, my parents, native Hebrew speakers 

both, call me Shoham, sho-hom, s h o h a m. They pronounce 
it better than I ever have, or probably ever will.

For a long time, that didn’t mean much to me, but then 

I left for college and it started meaning something more — 
my name started feeling like home. A home I don’t share 
with baristas, or Noodles and Co. employees, but something 
important, something special, my culture and my family, all 
wrapped up into one.

I joke a lot that should I have kids, I’ll give them shitty 

(read: similarly unpronounceable) names to build character. 
And I might. But I’ll do it with the knowledge that although 
it might take a long time for it to mean something — to come 
with a relationship, a territory, a person — in the end, it will 
at the very least mean family.

Even if it’s just family solidarity in lying to Starbucks 

baristas.

ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND

Personal Statement: I am Shoham

by Shoham Geva, Daily News Editor

