What’s in a name? Lots of things.
Primary name
Most people call me Rachel. A certain subset of friends from a certain time in my life call me Kwon. I’ll respond to either.
Professional name
My coworkers call me Rachel. From 2010-2016, a lot of people called me Dr. Kwon. Infrequently these days, some people in certain contexts still try to call me Dr. Kwon, or ask me if I want to be called Dr., but most of the time I say “just call me Rachel.”
What my loved ones call me
My sister used to call me Way-ddee (like “wait-dee”)1 when I was a baby and she was a slightly bigger baby, because pretty much all of the consonants in “Rachel” are difficult for a baby to pronounce, so that was how she said it. It became something of an inside joke in my family and my parents would sometimes call me Way-ddee even when I was an older child (probably also to lightly roast my sister).
These days my family generally calls me Rach, Rachie, or Rachel. Sometimes people I don’t know very well will shorten my name to “Rach” unsolicited, which bothers me.
My partner has lots of sweet and silly nicknames for me and almost never calls me Rachel (and yes, that trope of your partner calling you by your government name meaning you’re in trouble is true 😅).
Other nicknames bestowed upon me
In school, some of my sister’s friends called her Kwon. When I showed up (she was two grades ahead of me), they started calling me Lil’ Kwon. It wasn’t meant to be diminutive — they were all really nice to me. My sister wasn’t a mean jealous older sister, she was protective and kind, and they followed her lead.
A childhood friend occasionally called me RayRay. A group of English and Scottish friends on my hall when studying abroad called me Razza.
Various people I know in personal and professional settings who have an appreciation for the Wu-Tang Clan have called me Raekwon or The Chef2. (At one of my previous employers, one of our legal counsel asked to speak with me after a meeting, and I was like oh no i have caught the lawyer’s attention… this cannot be good, but all she said was “I was just wondering if anyone calls you Raekwon”).
A colleague/friend in residency used to call me Ra-hel (he was Bukharian and spoke some Hebrew). Other creative colleagues/friends in residency made up nicknames that would riff off of Kwon, like “Kwonton Soup” or “Kwonicles of Narnia” or “Kwontum Leap.” You get the picture.
Not quite my name
I’ve had my name mispronounced as Raquel and Rachelle, and incorrectly spelled as Rachael or Rachal. 🤷🏻♀️
My dad will sometimes do this thing where it takes him a few tries to correctly land on “Rachel” when calling me or referring to me — he’ll try my sister’s name, my nieces’ names, and, inexplicably, sometimes our childhood dog’s name (Phoebe) 😭. All of our names have two syllables. When I was younger, I found it annoying, but now that he’s older I think it’s pretty sweet because he’s just cycling through the names of his babies who he loves (again, I’m not sure why Phoebe is in the rotation given that they didn’t have a particularly special bond, but maybe he liked her more than he let on).
Actual origin
My Christian parents named me after a biblical character who was essentially the favorite sister-wife of another character who had been tricked into marrying his first wife (her sister), and she had fertility problems and basically said she wanted to die if she couldn’t have kids with him. Relatable, amirite? Well, I can’t say that any of that resonates with me personally, an unmarried woman living in sin with my lesbian lover and happily child-free, but in any case, that’s where “Rachel” comes from. The name itself means “lamb.” I also have a Korean name, 어진, which ChatGPT said means “warm-hearted, thoughtful, and morally upright.” When I asked my mom if that was accurate, she said:
Text response from my mom about my Korean name
The only people who ever called me by my Korean name, and always as 어진이 or 어진아 which are affectionate ways of saying my name (similar to Rachie) were my grandparents. I haven’t been called by those names for a long time.
Why all this now
I’ve been taking a beginner ASL (American Sign Language) class and we had a lesson on names, specifically sign names, and it got me thinking about names, what they represent, and how they differ in different languages and cultures.
Korean names, as above, are very intentional and seem to have deep and somewhat dramatic meaning (which is also consistent with my experience with Korean people — I mean, just look at the concept of 한). They also all have 3 syllables (one for the last name and two for the first name), with very few exceptions, which also sort of reflects the homogeneity of the people. American English names seem largely based on the namer liking what the name sounds like, or cultural/generational trends (met any Mildreds under the age of 90 lately, or a woman named Taylor over the age of 40?).
For sign names, my current understanding (which is almost certainly incomplete, as I’m still a beginner in ASL and not a member of the Deaf community) of the Deaf cultural norm around names is that a sign name isn’t something you choose for yourself, especially not as a hearing person, but is given to you by a Deaf person and often (but not always) incorporates something descriptive about you like a physical feature or personality characteristic. This seems unique compared with spoken languages because the recipient gets their sign name after they have been at least somewhat acquainted with the person who’s giving the name. That’s very cool.
This naming-after-knowing paradigm seems to have some similarities with the experience of trans people who choose a new name as part of their transition3. If you think about it, the approach of being named after you or someone else actually knows who you are makes a lot of sense. When you receive a name as a baby (effectively a blank slate of a human), how do you know that the name itself doesn’t influence who the person becomes? (I think there is actually quite a lot of research out there that names do in fact have that effect, at least for some people to some degree.)
So, if you ask me my name, know that alllll of the above is probably what’s running through my head in the split second before I say (or fingerspell) “Rachel” 😅.
I just realized I have literally never written this out because it’s a nickname that has only ever been spoken to me. ↩︎
One time, I met the actual Raekwon at my neighborhood wine store, and I said, “Hello. My name is Rachel Kwon. Sometimes my friends call me Raekwon” and his face lit up and he said “What?! Rachel Kwon!” and then started chanting “Rachel Kwon! Rachel Kwon!” He also insisted we take a selfie together, and then also corrected my camera angle when I tried. Alt for linked image: Selfie of two smiling people, me (Rachel, a Korean woman with glasses) on the left and Raekwon, a Black man with a salt-and-pepper beard on the right. Raekwon is wearing a red Yankees cap and in the background there are signs in the background that suggest we’re in a wine shop. ↩︎
This is my understanding and what I’ve learned or observed from friends or people I know who are trans, so I’m not speaking for them, just relaying what I know — definitely do not take this as an authoritative or representative opinion. (I also know trans people who kept their birth name.) ↩︎
