What’s in a Name: The Moth Podcast

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With KaE, the development of the online market, the advantages of the companies are also the advantages of the company. And that's the question as it is. The topic of security and compliance is really simple. It's quite long, it's almost out.

“That's why many startups are open and open.”

And if it's not open, it's not open. Yet, start an off-enter.com. Welcome to TheMoth, I'm Jodie Powell. I've thought a lot about the names of things. What's in the name?

How does it survive time, distance, language and the stories we tell about it? Does it change as it travels like a game of telephone? A vowel shifts, a sound drops, something gets lost or something new is found in translation. There's an old proverb that says, "Your name is your first story." And I think that's true.

On this episode, we have two stories about names. The names of people, the names of concepts, and how naming can shape the essence of the thing. First up is Elise Mcernerny, who told this at a Melbourne storieslam where the theme was green. Here's Elise, live at the Moth.

“Ever since I can remember, I have hated my surname.”

Mcernerny, so nasal and so many consonants just banging up together. In primary school, I would cringe through roll calls as teachers would fumble over it. Elise Mcerny, Elise Mcernerny, Elise Mcernerny. In high school, when I'd stand in front of the mirror, using my water bottle as a makeshift Academy Award. I just couldn't stretch the fantasy far enough to imagine them ever calling out a name as inelgan as Mcernerny at the Oscars.

I've had to spell it out for countless receptionists and customer service representatives. And people I've been friends with for years will turn around and ask, "How do you say last name again?" And as I got older, my surname took on some additional baggage. My parents divorced when I was 12, and my mother quite reasonably chose not to keep her ex-husband surname. And after the divorce, my relationship with my father deteriorated pretty quickly.

“We had a lot of counseling during my teens, but nothing ever really got better.”

As I got into my 20s, I found myself in a cycle of just never ending her where every cut just made it harder and harder to heal the damage done.

And so one day, I made the really difficult decision to seize all contact with my dad. And in doing so, I lost my connection to my extended Mcernerny family too. And so, the name Mcernerny started to hurt a lot more than just my ears, but my heart a little bit too. I felt set a drift, and I had to figure out what it meant to have a name that linked me to a father and a family that I now didn't feel like I belonged to. Shortly after I'd seized contact with my dad, he's 60th birthday was approaching.

And while I knew that I'd made the right and the necessary decision, it didn't make it easy and practice. And I hadn't quite figured out what to do with big events and milestones like this. I was the one who decided to step away from the relationship, yet it felt like I was the one in exile. And the thought of sitting at home while my other siblings and my extended family gathered without me was deeply painful. And so I decided that if I couldn't be part of the celebration, I would treat myself to an adventure so far away that I wouldn't feel the pain so deeply.

And so I booked myself a tour across Ireland.

And I'd always wanted to visit Ireland, growing up, I'd love the stories of magic and mythology.

I loved the music and the idea of sitting in a cozy pub corner where the pint in a book amongst those sprawling green hills felt like it was just what I needed. Like the travel equivalent of a big hug. And even though my line of macaroni's hadn't lived in Ireland for generations, there was something soothing about the idea of visiting a place that had once been home to my family. And when I arrived in Dublin, I saw a sign with my name on it, and the man holding it said, "You're at least macaroni." And I was almost in shock at how easily it just rolled off his tongue.

No stammering, no awkward pauses, and just a sing-song-lute that made it sound almost pretty. And I did all the touristy things, I stared in awe at the cliffs of more, and I kissed the bunny stone. I drank a pile of kitties at the Guinness Brewery and had a whiskey at the Jamson Distillery. I wandered the streets of Dublin and limb-ricking Gullway. And I felt a sense of peace, wash over me as I sat in a bus, blasting the cause and cranberries on my headphones, watching those green hills roll by.

And I grabbed my phone to see how long away we were from the hotel.

“And when I looked to the map, I realized we were about to turn into a village called Six Marbridge, which I recognized as the village that my line of macaroni's were from.”

And I was surprised to feel this real sense of gravity and reverence as the view outside the window changed from paddocks to a little row of houses and some old colorful buildings along narrow roads. And then I saw in faded blue paint on an old pub, the word, macaroni's. And I felt an unexpected prickly of tears in my eyes to see my name up there, to see my name which in this pocket of the world was on pubs and shop fronts and in churches and symmetries. My name which meant that somewhere in the world there was a place where I belonged, even if it sometimes felt far away.

And maybe that was a worthwhile trade for a lifetime of correcting spelling and mispronunciation.

Thank you. That was at least macaroni, at least as the older sister of five siblings and on to three nipplings and a willing servant to two cats. When she's not on the Melbourne Moth story's lamb stage, she works in social policy or can be found snorkeling along Melbourne's beaches. We asked her for a feeling about her name have changed since telling the story and she said that since then, she and her five siblings now have four surnames between them all. But family is still where she feels the strongest sense of belonging. She's also becoming on with two nieces and a nephew and can't wait to take them traveling one day so they can find their own places in the world that make them feel at home.

At least the story had me thinking about my name. I currently go by Jodi Powell, but my actual name is Jodi Anne Powell. As you might hear, there's a hyphenate Anne in there.

“I remember when I was younger, I was furious with my mother, what's with all these names and what's with the hyphenate Jodi Anne who?”

So when I got older, I quietly dropped the Anne. I grew up around lots of hyphenated folks all over the Caribbean and later I met plenty folks from the south with names just like that. So I've come to appreciate it a bit more and every now and then I bring the full hyphen back out. Now for this episode, allow me to introduce myself as Jodi Anne Powell, one of the many folks still growing into their names. Up next, another story about a name, one that you might already have a strong feeling about, back in a moment.

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Start your free trial at Shopify.com/AU. Welcome back! Our next story is from Ryan Astrada, who told this at an unarbor storieslam where the theme was style. Here's Ryan, live at the mark.

I've never really considered myself a style icon.

In fact, back when I was a kid, there was some very basic, uncreative bullies who told me that if I were to look in the dictionary under unfashionable, I'd see myself. They were the ones at the basic jokes. I just had the basic clothes. But I do have an excuse for why I look like this. I'm a cartoonist. I spend most of my time sitting alone in a room staring at a desk. So I just wear like, this is the clothes that I have, and when I go out of the house, I still look like this.

Which made it really, I had this really weird day back in 2016. It was the day before my 36, yeah, my, how old was I? I don't know. I was getting old. And so, I log into my computer and I see all of these alerts coming. Oh, that's nice. My friends are wishing me a happy birthday. They were not. Instead, it was a lot of people talking about my fashion.

So I'm like, great. I'm already feeling old and uncool and now you're going to make fun of my clothes. But these were not my friends. These were complete strangers talking about the fashion trend that I invented and apparently did not know existed.

I click it and I see immediately a photo of the exact outfit that I was wearing.

Next to a headline that says, "Normcore, named, runner up for Word of the Year by Oxford English Dictionary." I'm like, what the hell is normcore? Luckily, I'm in the dictionary. So I scroll down, noun, a style in which you wear purposely unfashionable clothes to make a point. A couple of clicks later and I see, created by cartoonist Ryan Astrada.

“I've got left my house in a month. How do these people know how I'm dressing?”

It took some investigation work to figure out what was going on here. Apparently, a couple years before that, I'd had this ridiculous deadline, where I'd to make a hundred comics in a month. I don't know if anyone here makes comics, a hundred comics is a lot of comics to make in a month. You go a little crazy, you don't sleep, and I was writing an illustrating comics that I completely forgotten existed by the time I clicked send on the email. One of them was apparently making fun of fashion trends, in which I made up a bunch of completely ridiculous trends.

In the punch line, the last panel was the stupidest fashion trend that my sleep deprived brain could think of, "Normcore." Which I defined as wearing only complete ordinary clothes, and only using slang after it appeared in a sitcom.

“Unbeknownst to me, a couple months after that, someone added my definition to Urban Dictionary.”

Apparently, there's a trend forecasting firm, and also apparently there's such a thing as a trend forecasting firm. But saw this on Urban Dictionary and wrote a piece about how "Normcore" was the next big thing, which led to every single trend setting, magazine, blog, newspaper, writing articles about how "Normcore" was a stupidest thing in the world. I do not read any trend setting magazines, because apparently I'm "Normcore." So, I knew none of this was happening until it was nominated for word of the year.

Once I found that out, it was everywhere. GQ referred to it as a stupid trend made up by idiots. Which I was kind of offended by, it's a stupid trend made by unedite, singular, but I saw it on billboards.

“I saw it in the windows of department stores. I saw it on a Play-Doh commercial.”

The cast of Avengers were jokingly calling Hawkeye "Normcore" and interviews.

And finally, two of my favorite TV characters rose at Diaz and Ron Swanson were expressed discussed at the word "Normcore" on their respective sitcoms.

The word "Normcore" was now "Normcore" enough to be "Normcore." So, yeah, high school bullies, sure. You were right in addition to being basic. If you look up unfashionable in the dictionary, you will see me. But apparently, I'm so good at being unfashionable that I'm kind of a style icon. It was Ryan Estrada. Ryan is an artist, author, an adventurer who travels the world-making comics, such as the Freeman award-winning band book club, No Rules Tonight, and Good Old Fashion Korean Spirit.

We asked Ryan if it was strange to keep hearing the word "Normcore" pop-up. Here's what he said.

An hour ago, I was watching succession, and I heard Roman Roy, a character who uses more swear words than verbs, called someone "Normcore" as though it were the most profane word on the planet. Then, I got this email that the story was going to appear on the mouth. No matter what projects you choose to devote your time and energy on, you never know what fleeting thought is going to have an impact on culture. "Normcore" is my gag gift to the world. We'll have the comic that started everything on our website, TheMoth.org/Extras.

That brings us to the end of our episode. Thanks so much for joining us. We hope that whatever your name is, you have a wonderful week. Judy Ampal is a director and educator at TheMoth, who enjoys listening to and seeking stories from beyond the main corridors. Originally from Jamaica, she currently lives in Harlem. This episode of TheMoth, podcast was produced by Sarah Austen-Geness, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of TheMoth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Cluchai, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinalae, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rest, and Patricia Orenya.

All Moth stories are true as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website TheMoth.org.