Maybe God named me in the womb. Maybe my momma did. In any event, one of them screwed it up.

The problem with birth names is that many of us worship them—except, of course, in the case of a married woman or an athlete like the Babe. Or a writer. Or celebrity. Or the Vice-President.

Cher, for instance, has had no fewer than eight names, including Chér, Cherilyn Sarkisian, Cheryl LaPiere, Cleo (short for Cleopatra), Cher Bono, Cher Allman, and Bonnie Jo Mason.

Bonnie Jo Mason?

And British writer Joanne Rowling chose the name J. K. Rowling, adding the K at publication in an apparent effort to pass as male. In 2013, she continued her pen-name-transition when she wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith for her Cormoran Strike detective series.

Perhaps we’re less picky about birth names than we profess and, in fact, agree with Shakespeare’s Juliet, who boldly declared, “What’s in a name?”

But then Juliet wasn’t named after a Mouseketeer, and this point brings me back to my mother.

Margaret Darlene O’Dell is my full name, though I am called Darlene. Travel back with me to my early school days as I await that thrilling moment in first grade roll call when my name will initially be uttered in the ancient halls of academia.

From behind a pair of diamond-studded glasses, my teacher rolls my name off her tongue. “Margaret O’Dell.” Except she pronounces it as a question: “Margaret O’Dell?”

I don’t know who Margaret is, though I’m pleased we share a last name. No one answers. My classmates and I look patiently around the room for her. I turn back to my teacher who is smiling and nodding in my direction. I bring my hand to my chest and say, “You talking to me?”

Storming off the bus, I confront my mother, who has been preparing for this moment since she signed my birth certificate. “When you were a baby,” she says calmly, “you couldn’t pronounce Margaret, so we called you Darlene.” I believe this story.

Years later, I discovered my mother had named me Darlene because she thought the actor by that name on the 1950s Mickey Mouse Club was “sweet.” Truthfully, I’ve never quite recovered from the shock of it. “You’re ... you’re telling me that you thought it was a good idea to name me after someone who wears giant mouse ears on national TV?”

There’s a subtext here as well: My grandmother and great-grandmother were named Margaret. Even a distant ancestor buried under the Thomas Wolfe angel—yes, the one from Look Homeward, Angel—was named Margaret. It’s an old family name with some serious heft to it. Queens and saints are named Margaret. And nunneries. My mother had felt the pressure of the matriarchs to give her first-born daughter their weighty name, but it was the “join the jamboree” spirit of Disney that had captured her heart.

The years pass, my 27th birthday rolls around, and I no longer think much about the origin of my name. My mother calls to wish me a happy birthday and casually informs me that she made a mistake with Darlene and believes she’ll switch to calling me Margaret now that I’m older. “That ship has sailed, Mom,” I tell her. The next day, though, I receive a letter from her. It begins, “Dear Maggie.”

I am beside myself. My mother is a small-town, quirky Southern woman who wears big hats and knows how to make this sort of thing stick. I suspect a new ID bracelet is already in the mail.

So we talk. For a long time. My mother will finally understand. “I know it’s your decision, Doll,” she says with resignation. Doll is the pet name she’s called me since birth. Mom had a slight lisp, so it’s possible she was saying Darl, but I’m fairly certain it was Doll.

I was good with Doll. I’ve always heard the love in that name. We should all hear the love when our name is called. Juliet tells Romeo that if his Montague name stands between him and love, then he must “doff that name,” refuse it. Romeo answers that if she will but call him “love,” he’ll drop Romeo as well as Montague.

What, then, is in a name? Apparently, a choice.

Darlene O’Dell

is the author of The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven (Church Publishing, 2024), Raised in the World of Everyday Poets (Yavanika Press, 2022), and Sites of Southern Memory: The Autobiographies of Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Lillian Smith, and Pauli Murray (University Press of Virginia, 2003).

Her essays and articles appear in National Catholic Reporter and Patheos; her photographs in Meat for Tea, National Catholic Reporter, and San Antonio Review; and her poetry in Contemporary Haibun Online, failed haiku, Frogpond, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Modern Haiku, The Museum of Americana, Presence, Sonic Boom, Under the Bashō, and Wales Haiku Journal, among others.

Dr. O’Dell teaches online writing workshops from western North Carolina. For more information, please visit her website and her Bluesky page: darleneodell.com and [at]darleneodell22.bsky.social

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Frostbite and Portrait of a Young Artist, a pair of haibun by Darlene O’Dell in Issue 28 of MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ-28 (April 2025)

⚡ Three Shahai (aka photo-poems) by O’Dell, also in MacQ-28

⚡ A solemn Christmas in Asheville, three months after Hurricane Helene: essay and photographs by O’Dell in National Catholic Reporter (24 December 2024)