The name dilemma

Dear friends of the blogosphere, I need you to weigh in on something that’s been bothering me for weeks.

First, the premise: 

The Boy’s name is Alexandre, and to be really precise let me just say straight off the bat that it’s pronounced like Alexander. We named him Alexandre because, obviously, we liked the name, also, it’s similar to the husband’s name and we chose to spell it that way because it’s the Brazilian spelling and as I’m half Brazilian it all seemed to make sense. Plus, I went to a French school in Houston (yes, I know, my family’s messed up) and there were a LOT of boys named Alexandre (as this is how the French spell it too) and, as far as I know, none of them had any problem with the English speakers mispronouncing their name. Anyway…

Unfortunately, Italians are extremely literal and they pronounce things exactly as they are written so they pronounce his name with an accent on the last e, like Andre. 

But, no matter, I thought, I have a weird name too and have spent my entire life correcting people on the pronunciation and spelling, it’s no biggy. Yet… here in Italy, I’ve found, people can be pretty obtuse… point in fact, I have family members who still don’t know how to spell my name, or, more likely, don’t give a shit and decide to spell it the way it sounds rather than the way it’s actually spelled.

To make matters worst, we call the Boy, Xandre (pronounced Zander) because his dad’s nickname is Alex and we didn’t want the confusion of two people named Alex running around the house.

So anyway our conversations usually run something like this:

Stranger: “Oh, what a cute little boy! What’s your name, honey?”

Boy: “Zander”

Stranger looks totally confused so I step in:

Me: “Alexander”

Stranger: “Oh, Alessandro (Italian version), Hi Alessandro!”

Me: “No, actually it’s Alexander, Alessandro’s his dad.”

Stranger: “Sorry?”

Me: “His name isn’t Alessandro, it’s Alexander!”

Stranger stops calling him by name cause is confused.

Or maybe Stranger is actually a school teacher or something and sees his name written somewhere so the comment becomes: “oh! Alexandré! Ok!”

And that’s when I start banging my head against the wall.

So here’s the dilemma… the Boy is starting preschool in September, which basically means he’s really and truly on the road to being independent from us, and every day that passes more and more often he’ll be the one that’s going to be having the conversation above. We love him, it wasn’t our intention when we named him to make his life a living hell of futile repetition or worse, to spend his childhood and young adulthood answering to a name that’s simply not his own. So the Husband and I have been thinking of just getting his name legally changed to Alexander to avoid all this ridiculous confusion.

My problem though is that in my heart, in my mind, and in all his baby stuff (his bibs, his blankies, his sheets, his birthday cakes and invitations and baby books…not to mention on all the freaking church records) his name is Alexandre, and names are important, aren’t they? They’re important spiritually, mystically, anthropologically… his name is a part of him.

So, I’ve been spending my days on the fence, wondering, what’s in a name? How much of a hassle is it going to be for him to always be correcting people, or to answer to a slightly mispronounced version of his name? Is he going to care at all, or is it just me? Is it worth the hassle of going through the name change procedure (complicated beyond all semblance of proportion and sanity here in Italy by the infamous Italian bureaucracy) and then if it gets approved, is he going to mind that his name was changed without his consent? Will his life be different as Alexander than it would be as Alexandre?

What is in a name? And most importantly, what do I do?


Linking up with Shell at Things I can't say today.