Today, I posted a rant on the artist network I belong to. It was about my name. However, a friend of mine advised me to put it on my blog instead. Thanks, Kelly. Good advice. Now I’ve limited the number of people who have to read it. It’s not important or anything, but I was commiserating with other artists who have a hard time with people who misunderstand their names. That, or misspelling, or mispronouncing it, which all kinda suck.

Obviously, I get this ALL the time, and I’ve given up on correcting people. My first name gets mispronounced most of the time, and in the strangest way. I don’t even get how or why people pronounce it this way. Most people call and say, “May I speak to …[pause]… Eye-EEEEne?” WTF?! Sorry to sound so angry about it, but it gets annoying after a while.

When I get called back at a doctor’s office, and they pronounce it, “Aye-in,” I don’t mind that at all. It’s actually pronounced “Eye-in,” but I like “Aye-in” all the same, so I never say anything about it. However, the “Eye-eeeene” thing makes me a little crazy. Can’t people just try to sound it out?

Even when I tell someone how to spell it when I’m on the phone, I’ll say, “A-Y-I-N,” and they always return with “A-I???” Sometimes, I’ll get impatient, but I really try to be polite.

It’s not just my first name. My last name confuses everyone on Earth. There used to be a well-known artist named Barbara Ess. Mine just has one “S.” The medical people sometimes call me back as “Es,” or they will spell my name: “E-S?” as if my first name were single letters. How does that make sense?

Some writers have misspelled my first name in reviews, publications, newspapers, etc. They like to stick an “L” in it somewhere: Aylin, Ailyn, something. Maybe that’s just a better name?

Here’s the thing about my first and last name: I changed my last name when I got emancipated at 15, so it’s a childish, stupid thing I made up at 15. I was spelling out the letter “S,” like it was a clever thing to do. Not! It’s dumb, I know, but I was trying to dissociate myself from my family’s name (that started with an “S.” But after half a century, I kept that last name because people seemed to remember it. As an emerging artist, I was able to differentiate myself a little, and I’ve just kept it. People assume a lot of weird things about it, but it’s just a made-up name. It’s not shortened from something longer, and it’s not an indigenous name either.

However, I SHOULD have changed my last name when I changed my first name to Ayin a few years ago. Maybe 5 years ago? I can’t remember now. But I changed my first name for gender identity purposes. And now, no one gets it right.

It was a long, hard process to change it, or to decide to change it, because I knew I’d have to start my art career all over from scratch. People already knew of me. At least three people did, anyway. So it was a huge risk to change it. I felt like I’d be erasing my old “identity” with the name, and I’d be long forgotten, which in many ways, I was. I had a good thing going with my old name’s longevity, and I blew it.

And talk about getting my name wrong, almost NOBODY genders me correctly either, even when I did correct them, which I don’t do anymore. I’m a they/them, but it’s “she, she, hers, her, she” all over the place. I just try to ignore it and get resentful instead.

After all the shit I went through to go through a name change (Social Security card, bank, credit cards, voting and address, and all my online accounts that number in the 100s or more), I just can’t change it again. But I’m left hating my name. That’s not good! 😔 After all that trouble of changing it, I’m doomed to live with it.

I don’t know why I didn’t think about other people when I changed it. Aren’t others more important than me (more sarcasm)? I should have thought about all this, but I picked Ayin because it has a very deep meaning that resonated with me, but that only mattered to me, Eye-EEEEne.