lovenote: names
an introduction
My name is Charlotte. That seems like an appropriate place to begin. My name is Charlotte Elizabeth Weinman. But you can call me Charlotte, because that’s my name.
My name is Charlotte, and that is typically how I try to introduce myself to people. “Try” because I have trouble getting the sound out of my own mouth - my lips don’t want to move very far from each other, forcing it to sneak out, dented, like what happens to the heads of some babies. Thankfully, I am less often the one saying it than I am hearing it, and I am always delighted to hear how someone else manages. It’s tricky business- I was not named for anyone, so I’d like to understand what I’ve gotten myself into. I want you to understand, too. So that later, I can say that I was born in a coupe of champagne on a train in the olden days, or in the brine of a jar of pickles for sale in your bodega, and you will understand what I mean.
Of the Charlottes I know, they are each very different. Not for nothing, because every Claire I know is sweet in the same way that every other Claire I know is sweet, and same with Nicks, who are, in my experience, all quick and mischievous. Charlotte has, in my life, referred to a number of different characters, including the literate spider, the cardigan-wearing downer on problematic-at-best TV show, two girls I went to middle school with and one girl in my college.
Because it took me until age thirteen to meet another person named Charlotte, the name has become associated to me with a shape, kind of squiggly and vague, floral, ageless, with no yearning for humanity of its own.
I have met Charlottes who I feel earn the name a bit more than I do, which I say with neither profundity nor self-deprecation— they just do. My dad wanted to call me “Charlie” when I was younger; it didn’t take, but the threat of “Charlie” has loomed over me since. One day, some benevolent fairy will slap me with the coolness stick, I will wake up in a long leather duster coat; it will be apparent to all that I am “Charlie,” and I will need no introduction.
In real life, my personal “Charlotte” is just like that, and followed by “Elizabeth,” the same as the newest baby of the Royal Family of England and the opposite of the best friends in Pride and Prejudice, who are more often seen with Elizabeth leading and Charlotte tailing close behind. In my life, “Elizabeth” has caused me trouble, characterizing a brattier side of me I prefer not to lead with. What’s more, without “Elizabeth,” my name is two trochees, which absolutely give me goosebumps, so metrically, it throws off the whole vibe. But I’m getting ahead of myself now— more on that later.
“Charlotte” begins with the sound that means please be quiet, we are in a library or a museum or some other academic space where people like to think their thoughts inside. “Charlotte,” as in Brontë, who thought all of her thoughts inside on account of her being agoraphobic, and wrote books, which are large streams of thoughts kept inside, and, though I may have Jane Eyre in my house and you may have Jane Eyre in yours, I will read it in my head and you will do the same. Books are indoor cats, much like Charlotte herself, which makes me believe she must have lived a very contented life; perhaps one in which she never needed to get past the first sound of the name, because everyone else inside needed no introduction. Or, perhaps, soothed by quiet, she would repeat her name over and over to herself just for an excuse to bathe in that beginning noise.
The next sound in my name is as a sound a pirate might make. I feel it adds a necessary element of danger to the word. I like pirates because they stand for lawlessness, which is sexy, but they are obedient to a code of conduct of their own design, much like the whole of the Wild West, or at least the Wild West of my imagination: moonshine and pocket-watches and “ten-paces” and the apothecary. (Also, can I say? Nobody wants to admit it, but the difference between a pirate, an outlaw, and a knight is purely an aesthetic decision forked three separate ways. Fuck (excuse me) chivalry, it doesn’t seem to have done anybody enough good to offset the chauvinism that follows it like Charlotte does Elizabeth. At least when pirates and cowboys identify themselves as the villains, it provides room to be happily surprised by their decency). The second sound, the adolescence of the word, is about authentic rebelliousness, railing against the initial plea for quiet.
Here’s where things get complicated: the snarling, nauseous sound of the middle. The only sense I can make of it is that it feels like misinterpreting the force or swiftness of an ocean wave, being reminded that though you may be the one with the board, you are not designing the element you play in. “You” as in “me”. In pronouncing this part, often my tongue gets confused, tossed around. But it resolves in a decisive flick upwards, because that tends to be the direction of the breathable air from underwater.
And then, the end. An anticlimax in my opinion, but I have tend to glottalize my t’s because I’m from Los Angeles and that’s how we do it there. The end of “Charlotte” either is a sound like the first of “literature,” obvious and bright, nodding towards the intellectual, like a lightbulb overhead; or, it is self-diminishing and uncomfortable, like dressing up as a child and pulling your hands behind your back, swinging your body side to side and feigning shyness.
The end of “Charlotte” could be a simple thing of unaffected beauty— linens on a clothesline, a splash of freckles on a shoulder-blade— not something seeking commentary, but rather just there, like the word “grace” or “tablecloth”. My hope is that I will learn to say it with such simplicity. My hope, really, is to do all things that way, not giving too much thought, but being accidentally breathtaking and smelling lightly of jasmine and wood. “Charlotte” could be something on a letter tied to the ankle of a pelican, or written in sugar-water on the underside of a flower petal by a hummingbird who uses her beak as a stylus. It could be a scent, or a cobblestone, or a weather pattern. It is, in real life, the name of a dessert which goes ladyfingers around the outside, chocolate or strawberry mousse on the inside, and berries on top— sometimes tied around the outside with a ribbon. My mother made it for my birthday once, tying it up with her deliberate fingers. My family sat around for a moment with the blue plates, forks poised, agreeing that yes, it was beautiful, but too sweet. I looked up the name online as if it were a word in the hope of finding a definition, and found the words “little, free”. Yes, because it is hard to trap little things- I have met enough dandelions and lived with enough stowaway mice to know. But “Charlotte”, when it is my name, is ungraspable in a different way. It would not land in your cupped palm serendipitously; it would slither and writhe, its shape confusing, its texture at once slippery and sandpapery, like a stingray made of cat tongues. Or it is a rogue card from an antique deck tossed around in the wind. Or it is something else. When it is my name, it is mercurial, sometimes like “gnarled”, sometimes like “starling”. All this multiplicity keeps it from being the simple, beautiful thing of my dreams. Suddenly, unexpectedly, “Charlotte” is moody, complicated, but “Char” is too intimate to start with and “Lottie” is embarrassing and never was mine, so, “Charlotte”.
So, “Charlotte”. A rock back and forth. My imaginary friend. It has occurred to me lately that the name has less to do with me than I have to do with it. That is, a large piece of my personality must have come from saying “I’m Charlotte” to every new ecosystem.
At her worst, “Charlotte” insists on misunderstanding me. She pushes her eventfulness onto me as if her only agenda is to clunk around, sulking loudly. Other times, though, “Charlotte” will look at me, and the mist between us is forgiving and uncloudy. She will glimmer with recognition at the sound of herself. She will float by my side like a ghost my mother gave me.