To Dismiss or Not to Dismiss Angelina from my Life

I hate filling forms. They always ask for my first name and last name. I always have to make those up as I don’t actually have a first name, forename, last name, surname, maiden name or middle name. Then there’s also the decision as to whether I should put down my Burmese name or my English name.

Grrr … life shouldn’t be this complicated.

It’s no good telling the forms that I don’t have a last name. They’re always looking the other way as if it’s got nothing to do with them. So, every time there is a need for it, I put in the last bit of my three-part Burmese name. Nobody has questioned it so far.

When my parents were picking a name for me, they didn’t take into consideration that I would be living abroad when I grew up. Like every other Burmese, I was given a unique name which doesn’t show any ties to my family. There is nothing in my name that indicates my father’s name. If I had any siblings, they would have had completely different full names, without any words in common that would say we were from the same family. A lot of Burmese names also have meanings designed to give the owner the best of luck and personality throughout their life. Good intention, but sadly it seems the personality bit enjoys a success rate of only 0.1 percent. Anyway, my parents and their monk came up with a three-part name for me that means ‘collected, noble and graceful’.

I fail to live up to it big time. Whenever I used to laugh out loud, my mum would tell me off for not behaving like a ‘proper young lady.’ So, I learnt not to let out any horse laugh, which was difficult, especially when I was watching Tom and Jerry or when I caught sight of someone lurching past our apartment with an idiotic gait.

Nevertheless, I was taught to behave living up to my name. No shouting, no talking loud, no belly laughs, no flirting, no running, no short skirts, no backchatting to elders, no countless other things. And I’m also supposed to have no traits and no wants of my own that differ from my mum’s. I do think sometimes that it would have been a lot more satisfying for my mum simply to have cloned herself rather than bring me into the world.

Anyway, my name felt somewhat burdensome as I always had to behave like a calm, noble and graceful human being in training. But when I started going to English language classes in the American Embassy after I finished high school, my mum thought it a good idea for me to have an English name. She reckoned the name would have to start with an ‘A’ in line with the alphabet of birth animals. She looked through the list of names in a book, and I narrowly escaped becoming an Audrey by a few minutes. Eventually, being the creative person she is, my mum came up with Angeline. She thought angels are pure and graceful. (She obviously hadn’t seen enough of the world.) So, she added a syllable to Angel and I became ‘Angeline’.

Part of me thought that I should just stick with my Burmese name and these American teachers should strive to pronounce their students’ names correctly. After all, they were in Burma and we always tried to pronounce their names right. But a lot of students give themselves an English name so that it would be more convenient for their foreign teachers.

Although I felt a little strange at first, I loved my new name ‘Angeline’. I thought it was very pretty.

But now I’m in the UK, a lot of people take it upon themselves to add ‘na’ to it without me asking them and call me ‘Angelina’. At first, I shrugged it off as misplaced kindness. But after a while, I flinched every time somebody called me ‘Angelina’ as my smug bubble of owning an unusual name had become tainted somehow.

One or two people offer to take my name to the next level and call me ‘Angelique’ accompanied by distorted facial expression. Others have toned it down to ‘Angela’ as they thought ‘Angeline’ was too long-winded. I was once called ‘Angle-line’! I thought that person was the most creative of all. So far, I have never come across a version that I like better than ‘Angeline’, so regrettably I must reject all their thoughtful suggestions. I’ve also tried using my Burmese name. But everyone managed to make it sound like they’ve just discovered a new species of mud dwelling bullfrog or a skydiving water repellent cactus or were naming a new breed of bubbling bowel disease. So, I have stuck with ‘Angeline’ even though people keep volunteering to put a twist on it.

But the other day, I heard my cousin call me ‘Su Su’ through the other side of Whatsapp. For him and the rest of my relatives, I am known by that childhood name. They wouldn’t even recognize ‘Angeline’. Maybe if I had stayed Su Su, I probably wouldn’t have had to watch my name mutating on the tip of people’s tongues. Even the most creative person in the world would find it impossible to mould it into Angelina and its derivatives.

So, really, to be or not to be Su Su. That is the question.