A rose by any other name (might vibe differently with test groups)

This past week has been one of events, friends.

One of these was an end-of-Fame-Week party hosted by my screen agent* where I got to rub shoulders with people well-versed in the language of success and consider the nature of my name. Once again.

You see, the people at the party weren’t only very successful, they also all had very famous-sounding names, names like Gabe McGuy and Trent Stormface and Rosa Hollywood and Jean-Paul du Mont la Mont. Okay, not those exactly, but you get the gist. Movie-type names. Names that belong in lights. Names that have a certain zing about them.

You know what I mean. Like, “Rose Gabriel” sounds much more twinkly than, say, “Maureen Clod”, and “Lucinda Vanderbilt” more robust than “Nicci Jay”, right?

Some names just lend themselves more than others to a certain kind of shine and we can feel this, even if we don’t necessarily subscribe to it consciously.

It’s why Thomas Cruise Mapother IV became Tom Cruise, Reginald Kenneth Dwight “Elton John”, Samuel Langhorne Clemens “Mark Twain”, Howard Allen Frances O'Brien “Anne Rice”, and Eric Arthur Blair “George Orwell”. Elizabeth Woolridge Grant cycled through four stage names – “Sparkle Jump Rope Queen”, “Phenomena”, “Lizzy Grant”, and “May Jailer” – before settling on “Lana Del Rey”.

In the public’s imagination, names matter.

So, back to the party.

While I was hobnobbing with these great-sounding names I introduced myself to one who stared at me quite blankly and said “Meeson? Meeson? Why on earth that?”

I wanted to feel taken aback by this but, truth be told, I’d asked myself the same question many times. “Tanya Meeson” has never sounded twinkly to me; it’s never felt authory enough. It’s no Ursula Le Guin to fantasy or Stephen King to horror or Karen Slaughter to thriller.

In fact, it was rather a fraught process deciding to use – or not to use – my birth name after leaving my professional nom de plume Dorothy Black after 14 years.

In 2020, when I eventually “came out” as Tanya Meeson and was in the process of bringing The Fulcrum into the world, I found myself once again playing around for another pen name, something that would sound more aurally exotic for the direction I wanted my career to take, juggling variations that included using my mother’s second name (Kay) and her surname (Jones) and names that might honour my Welsh heritage, like Rhiannon or Carys or Hheled or Erin. I even briefly considered adopting Tom’s surname of “Eaton”. I briefly considered a sex-ambiguous name.

But none of it gelled and I just couldn’t get into it.

Fact is, I didn’t want the complication of a third name or the emotional and physical energy it would take to change my name again; it’s hard work rejigging your identity in your mid-life and in an era where digital footprints stretch very far, very wide, and very deep. I didn’t want to deal with people saying shit like “oh I know your real name” wink wink. Mostly, I guess, I realised I wanted to stop running from who I was. After 14 years of being known as Dorothy Black, I just wanted to be me.

And so here we are. Tanya Meeson it is. Still not authory sounding enough for me; not best-seller-sounding. But mine. And, I have to say, what it lacks in authory romance it makes up for in easy originality: as far as Google is concerned, I’m the only the Tanya Meeson in the world. So that’s got to count for something right?

Anyway.

Another (bigger, but less flummoxing) highlight this week was the Open Book Festival. Here are some pics and a small write-up about it on Instagram (tappity tap).

Hope you are well and I wish for you to be in your element and in your name.

Tanya Insert Exotic-Sounding Authory-Type Second Name Here Meeson.

* I would’ve crowed more about getting an agent when I signed, but until the show’s been picked up it’s all just glitter and fairy dust. Watch this space.

Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash

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