Lísa with an í

How one tiny mark, a match and a little private mythology turned Lisa into Lísa.

My name is Lisa.

I have never particularly loved it.

Apparently, this started early. There's a story in my family that when I was about three years old, I went through a period when I refused to answer to Lisa at all. I would only answer to my middle name.

That story eventually prompted my mom to tell me the story of how my name came to be. It was a lovely story.

But even at three, apparently, I knew.

The story wasn't mine.

As a child, I was fascinated by names and what they meant. I learned that Lisa was a derivative of Elizabeth, which I was told meant “consecrated to God.”

What a lofty ambition for a child.

I felt that meaning as something to live up to in my young soul.

And then I went to school, where there was another Lisa.

Except she was Lesa with an E.

I was Lisa with an I.

In my eyes, my name still wasn't unique.

And it didn't describe me very well.

And that is just the beginning of my story. Names have continued to fascinate me ever since.

When I got married, I chose to take my husband's surname. For a while, I flirted with using both my maiden and married names, but it was quite a mouthful (and a terrible email address).

There was another layer to the choice. I was marrying into a culture different from the one I was born into, and carrying his surname has led to more than a few startled moments from people who had made assumptions about what I would look like before meeting me.

In the end, though, my decision was surprisingly practical: What would make this less confusing for our future children?

A funny thing for a young person, about to be married, to be thinking about children who didn't even exist yet.

When those children did arrive, I took naming them very seriously.

I spent hours researching meanings and combinations, trying to honour my lineage and his, ours and theirs. I wanted each child to have something uniquely their own. More than that, I wanted their names to MEAN something.

A secret little message from my heart to theirs.

Maybe even a future hint of the personality to come.

For at least one of our children, we didn't get it quite right. One name got a slight tweak shortly after birth with lasting consequences we've never entirely lived down with our graceful mountain child.

Although that child grew up deeply connected to the natural world.

So maybe we didn't do too badly.

We chose their names as best we could, with all the love we had. Much like my parents, I'm sure, chose mine.

And if one of our children decides the name we chose isn't theirs after all, they know they have our support to choose differently.

Because love and fit aren't necessarily the same thing.

You know,  I've watched people change their names decades into their lives, and in some ways I've envied that freedom to shift.

But I've never found another name that carried enough yes for me to want to go through the administrative hassle of becoming someone else on paper.

How very practical of me.

Instead, I changed one tiny thing.

Lisa became Lísa.

When I first encountered the possibility, I was enchanted.

I had been playing with the idea of a more magical version of my own name. Like Erin to Airyn. Not necessarily a different name, but something that felt more distinctly mine.

And then there it was: one tiny mark.

The í looked to me simultaneously like a match and a candle.

The spark and the flame.

There was something almost talismanic about it, a tiny piece of private mythology sitting right there in the middle of my very ordinary name.

I remember describing it at the time as “subtle but sovereign.”

And then: “It feels a bit like a sigil, a private one.”

That was part of what I loved. It didn't require anyone else to understand it. I remember thinking that my mom and even some of my closest friends probably wouldn't quite get why this tiny mark delighted me so much.

They didn't have to.

I did.

It didn't make me someone else. It didn't discard the name my parents had lovingly chosen, or the person who had carried it for more than fifty years.

It made the name feel like mine in a new way.

A reclamation.

A new beginning.

A reminder of who I choose to be.

The private mythology kept accumulating. At the time my hair was a deep blue-navy that could flash sapphire in the sunlight, with my white-grey roots sparkling through. Somehow the little mark belonged with that too. Not because it had some official ancient meaning I had discovered, but because I was giving it meaning of my own.

A spark. A flame. A sigil.

My mark.

I didn't need an entirely new name after all.

I just needed to put my own little mark on the one I already had.

Lísa with an í.