What's in a middle name?
An oral history of my middle name but mostly a long-winded way to write about writing.
In Spanish culture, middle names aren’t a thing, and women don’t take the last names of their husbands. When two people marry, the children are given the surnames of both their parents (while slightly more egalitarian, traditionally, the father’s surname comes first, which is the one that gets passed down, yet another point for the patriarchy).
Had I been born in Spain, my name would have been Brittany Evansen Kelly. Then if I had a kid, they would be Potato Vedder Evansen (in today’s fantasy I’m marrying Eddie Vedder, but Potato is the name of my future dog, I’m just not quite ready for them yet!).
It was hard being a Brittany growing up in the late 90s. That’s an absurd sentence to write, but in middle school there was a time where I was in a class with two other Brittanys, so naturally we were differentiated by our last initial. In this case that was also absurd as we were Brittany E, Brittany B, and Brittany P.
This was devastating for me as I really wanted to feel like an individual, but mostly because the other Brittanys received far more attention from boys. It’s also rather shocking that we all had the same spelling. Once in a summer camp in elementary school there was another Brittany, but she spelled it B-r-i-t-n-e-y.
I have a vivd memory of us arguing because she is insisting that my name is Bri-TAN-ee, while hers is simply Brit-nee. Although I fought back that it wasn’t true, internally I was freaking out because she really had a point about the spelling and the sounding out of the letters and what if I had been saying my own name wrong this whole time?!
I guess little me would be bummed to know that here in Spain I often introduce myself as “Briii-tah-nee” (for authenticity get trilly on the r-i) because it’s how native speakers say my name when they see it spelled out/it’s easier for them to pronounce. I have no preference at this point. The people closest to me call me Britt, but when someone tries this too soon I don’t like it.
I have always, however, loved my middle name.
Aquinas.
The only other person on this planet that I know with the same middle name is my mom (if you know someone else do NOT tell me). The story of our shared middle name is one I love to tell.
My grandfather grew up in an orphanage. Or at least that’s the part of the story I knew until recently. The fuller story is that my grandfather was sent off to an orphanage when his own father’s alcoholism landed them in financial ruin. I don’t know anything about my great-grandmother.
This orphanage was run by nuns (cinematic red flag), who were mostly mean, but there was one who was kind called Sister Aquinas. My mom was given Aquinas as a middle name in her honor, which was then passed down to me. If I have a kid one day, I hope to continue this tradition, thus they will be Potato Aquinas Vedder Evansen.
The summer before I went off to college, I spent a lot of time with the Menzel family and we had so much fun. When I was with the Menzels, I felt like a more free version of myself. I remember sitting around the dinner table one night and good music was playing and we were eating delicious food and everyone was participating in the same conversation and it was just mind blowing. I didn’t know families actually did this. My family ate dinner on the couch in front of the television.
When I learned all the Menzel siblings had middle names that started with the letter “B”, I started jokingly calling myself Brittany Baquinas. Much later on, when I finally began to admit to myself that I wanted to write, I gave myself the pen name “Baquinas Von Havoc”. I thought it sounded badass and edgy (whereas the idea of pursuing writing was terrifying). I’m not sure I ever used this name for anything other than social media.
There was a brief time in college when my friends actually called me Aquinas and this felt like a tremendous achievement. Like I was finally being recognized as a popular kid that made it to the in-group with an official nickname.
Of course, in this particular circle of friends I was convinced they were all much cooler than me, so I always felt anxious and insecure around them. I also fully had a Mean Girls halloween party moment where I arrived as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas (and not in a cute way). Seeing everyone else in their sexy or clever or non-committal costumes, I quickly got drunk to mask the anxiety. I then proceeded to aggressively dance all night, streaking the make up with sweat.
Unsurprisingly, most of those friendships didn’t last.
The following summer, I took a pottery class and signed the bottom of my creations with “B. Aquinas.”
Aquinas took a back seat to “Ms. E” for a while when being a teacher was my whole personality. But then it snuck back when I was working at a PR agency in New York. On one of my teams we used our initials to label our respective agenda items. This also happened to be around the same time the word “bae” was in fashion, so we all had a laugh when I labeled my things BAE. Clearly, it stuck.
So why the hell have I spent my entire Sunday morning writing excessively about my middle name?!
I’ll tell you.
I’ve spent hours this weekend bringing my old newsletters onto this platform, and I’m still only halfway through. There have been times I have questioned if this is even a worthwhile endeavor. It’s not likely any new person is going to dive into the archives. But more importantly, they all just feel so vulnerable. The year I wrote the most was also the year I was grieving most deeply, and, not unrelatedly, the year I decided to stop taking SSRIs without prior medical consultation.
It’s been challenging to spend so much time with a version of me that was clearly struggling. It’s also been challenging to not edit out things that no longer feel true or accurate. But maybe what’s been most challenging is to confront a me who was far more dedicated to finding her voice as a writer.
For two weeks I’ve been failing to write a newsletter that I felt was important because it wasn’t about me – it was about politics and money and greed and broken institutions and exploitation and the way popular business media very rarely asks any hard questions of its CEOs. But I kept getting in my head about it. It was more difficult than usual to write. It was too long-winded (lol so is this). I couldn’t boil it down without getting caught up in the details. I feared no one would fucking care, but mostly, I questioned my legitimacy in writing about it.
Then this morning I picked up
’s book, 1,000 Words, something I’ve been avoiding reading because I knew it would make me confront myself, and within the first few pages I was hit with this:I write because I believe in myself, and that I have something worth saying.”
And this:
“You don’t even have to write the thing you want to write. You just have to write about it. Write a letter to yourself. Sit down somewhere quiet. Tell yourself why you want to write it, what you think it can be…”
And I said OKAY FINE let me just write SOMETHING. Which also led me to my laptop where the Canva tab was still open to that cute lemony graphic at the top of this page that I had made just for fun (and to milk the remaining 3 days of my free Pro trial).
It was this image that reminded me Aquinas is the name I come back to when I’m discovering and uncovering the parts of myself I love most. It’s a name connected to my lineage that honors a story of loving kindness. It’s the name I use when I’m giving myself permission to be who I’m becoming, someone who is bold and playful and makes art.
Making art feels best for me when it feels like play, so I guess my challenge now is finding a middle ground between the seriousness of what I want to write, and the fun that makes it more achievable.
Although I’ve had some false starts with the latest project, I believe in myself and I have something worth saying (to borrow Jami’s words). The me of 2019 certainly believed that when she wrote all those letters. So I’ll keep trying until I get it right.
Thanks for coming along with me.
Love,
Aquinas
Lol NEVER embarrassed just BLESSED 🩷✨