I choose...

[ailbhe]

I choose my name, my label for Me, my own word that designates Myself. I choose Ailbhe. I choose this because it was given to me in love, because it taught me many things - to defend the things I love, to differentiate between ignorance, wilful ignorance, and stupidity, and, most of all, to laugh at myself.

I choose Ailbhe as my name. I don't see myself ever changing this. It's a name with a history. It's mine.

I don't choose a so-called "title". I don't want one. Mister, Miss, Mistress, Ms or otherwise; until we have Comrade or Person or Citoyen or Alivething as a title, I want none of it. Perhaps I'll get a PhD so that I can be Dr. Perhaps I'll start using M.

I don't choose a surname. When I need to use one, I will use the one I have always used. I don't want another one; I don't feel that a name I borrow from someone else will ever really become mine, especially a name whose history I know almost nothing about. I have considered choosing my mother's maiden name as a surname, because that has a history I know a little about (only back to 1847 with corroborative evidence) or my grandmother's maiden name, about which I know very little, but I do know a story about a man with 60 pounds and a white horse. Or my great-grandmother's maiden name; she met her husband in London, and I have often visited the church where they married.

I choose Ailbhe. I know that the Post Office, among other people, are intensely uncomfortable with the thought of someone without a surname, and so I'm not going to change my name legally to Ailbhe. And I'll keep using Ms on drop-down lists.

But I wanted to say, rather loudly, that my name is Ailbhe.