Name Change: Part 1, The History of Some Names

Many people have asked me about my name change. How come I’m changing my name? How did I find “Vivi Sojorhn”? What do I expect from changing my name? How did I find the courage to change my name so suddenly? I found that I could not answer as if these were simple questions because my name has been with me as long as I can remember and there is a lot of history there. I figure the first time I really had an inkling I wanted to change my name was because I spent so much time naming the characters I wrote about. Then more so  when I was naming my own children, seeking out a name that felt like a gift to them, something they could stand carrying around. That is two decades ago. It has been a long process, like a lifetime practically. This entry is about how it all started.

I was named “Amanda,” after a black jazz singer in Chicago by the name of “Amanda Ambrose.” It took YouTube’s creation for me to finally hear her, but nevertheless, this is what I was told from the very beginning. In itself, it never bothered me for a moment that I could not verify this voice. I used the persona of a black jazz singer coursing through my name, as begging material to make friends with my black classmates by announcing now and then, “I was named after a black jazz singer,” in hopes of verification that she was someone to be named after. Certainly she was, but it wasn’t personal, I don't think. It was a lark.

I asked for more information about my name choice and what I got was that the name sounded cool and unusual. One parent wanted “Samantha” and the other wanted “Amanda” and “Amanda” won because the chooser was carrying me in her belly. I often wondered if I'd have been different had my father won. I don’t remember when but I started to seek out the meaning of the name. I’ve always been a little obsessed with words.  Later than childhood, but before I was fully adult, I learned that “Amanda” meant “worthy of love,” and that definition stuck with me ever after. It caused me to secretly wrestle with the notion of valuing love somehow and finding what is worthy and what is not. I started to question if it meant that I was worthy but not loved. Life is rough for teenagers...

Daddy and Pooh, Oil Pastels on Board,
2013 (c) A. M. Johnson

My maiden name, “Morris,” entered my family as they traveled to the Wild West in something like 1857. It was attached to my great-grandmother, May Eppstein, and her twin sister, Lillian Eppstein, because they married brothers Adolf and Ernest Morris. They, along with several of May and Lillian’s other sisters founded amazing Jewish organizations in Denver like the Denver Jewish Community Center, and Temple Emanuel, and made the Jewish Hospital, National. Adolf, my great-grandfather was an architect, and I know was a very good painter, better than I am, because we have his self-portrait and a few lovely landscapes of the early days in the state of Colorado on family walls. I carried obnoxious pride in my maiden name for a long time for their efforts, for my grandparent’s love and for my father’s talents and interests. My first name change happened on April 30, 1988, when I married my first husband. I was a conservative young lady and took my first husband’s family name, “Conti,” on the promise that he would take “Morris” for his middle name, too. I should have known.

That never actually happened, and testament to the importance of the carriage of names. It took me a long time to learn to manage my names, and I do believe this has to do with boundaries. I still kept signing “Morris” in the middle, though, as I had never had a middle name. For 18 years I was known as “Amanda Morris Conti”. Sometime later I learned that “Amanda” could be “beloved” and I embraced that definition of myself as well as I could in a difficult situation.

I had thought “Amanda Conti” would hold together and was fairly unique. Then I had my first website and  Googling became a normal activity. Therein I discovered that, in fact, there were other “Amanda Conti” women and even another in my own small town of Boulder, Colorado. Since the other one had a very different lifestyle than mine, with two young children, and a freelance writing career, I felt that the need to stop placing such importance on my family connections as it could be temporary after all. I think I did harbor the illusion that if I changed my name I could stay in the same life but it would be better. My first-time consciously chosen name change audition came as a purely professional “nom de plume,” and related to the new career of “web content provider”. Har.