What's In A Name...

I’ve always felt that what someone is called is almost cosmically important. When we call something or someone by a name, we are asserting, as much as we can, that they are a thing.

For instance, many of you have called me Brendon O’Brien for basically my whole life. But I don’t think that’s who I am. I don’t think it ever was.

Back in 2015, I got invited to a couple of Facebook groups that connect members of the O’Brien family from across the entire world. I’ve spoken to American ‘cousins’ about US policies, gotten invited to international weddings, been treated like family just because I share their name. And it was, at first, a warm feeling, to be included so completely, so easily, just based on what people called me.

That feeling started to wane pretty quickly with an obvious but still surprising revelation - I was basically the only black person in those groups.

Now, that’s not a bad thing in and of itself, and I never once experienced any racism while I was a member of those communities of O’Briens…but it brought into focus how much what I was being called could never truly be who I was.

Fast forward to today, to Alekseii. It’s actually not my name - it’s one of the given names of a person who’s closer to me than my own heart, the powerful Keir Alekseii. I’m lucky enough to be making a new life, a new family, with her…but there were some discussions about what we’d do about married names. She doesn’t want mine (and, to make things easy, neither did I), but we also weren’t sure that the new family that we would create had the same last name as her Lovely parents.

Alekseii - Russian: Алексе́й, [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej] - Defender

But, in a weird way, I knew I’d choose Alekseii - ‘defender’ in Russian. Not just because I wear the Paladin’s sigil as a representative of the Griot Guild (because, let’s face it, that would be a weird-ass reason), but because it was one of the things that brought us together, made us such a great team - our burning desire to defend those near to us from harm, from abuse; to use our passion as activists, educators, performers to stand at the front lines against ignorance and injustice. When we started working together as colleagues, even before we started dating, those were the things we were clear we wanted to do with our art and with our lives. And now we share a life together.

For a lot of folks, it’s apparently weird to agree to take your future wife’s name (and not even their actual last name). That probably deserves its own full blog post, but I will say this - I Love my future life partner so much that I’m okay with people seeing me as hers. In fact, I want them to hear her name every time they call mine, to see her incredible impact on my life every time they read my bio or name tag or next collection of poems. And the idea that folks would be insecure or emasculated by being referred to as their Lover’s partner is lost on me. I think there are much more weirder things about this…like me not waiting until finally did the government’s inevitable paperwork. We’ll see how that goes.

Now, that means the government is still gonna call me "O’Brien” for a bit, at least until October or November of this year. But that’s not what makes a person what they are, is it? Perhaps a name doesn’t make any of a person…but I still do think that it can act to signify who that person wants to be, at least in that person’s own head and heart. And for me, that’s the name Brendon Alekseii. In that name is my passion as a performer, my calling as an advocate and as a person, and my undying Love for the woman who I’m Blessed to make a family with. It’s the reason why I’m taking the leap and changing my name here, for those of you I’m lucky enough to call supporters. Call me according to my calling, and I promise I’ll do the same for you.

And, as always,
Blessings, Compassion, Peace & Love