What's in a name?

“What 's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

It’s true! Shakespeare had it right on.  Romeo and Juliet loved each other, yet tragically were never able to be together because of the difference in their names; Montague and Capulet.  Really, what do names mean?  They could mean a difference in class (in the case of Romeo and Juliet) or there are many different ways to define the “meaning” of a name.  Is there one? Everyone has one, but in reality….why?  I have never really liked my name.  I was teased at a young age because it sounds like a snobby, stuck up, girlie-girl’s name, and since then, I’ve never really cared for it because I don’t think I am any of those things.  I’m not exactly the kind of person that someone may think of when they hear the name Tiffany.  I suppose I could change my name, but over the years, I’ve gotten used to my name and realized that well, it’s just that, a name.

In Bharati Mukherjee’s, novel, Jasmine, the main character, Jasmine or Jane or Jyoti or Jase or Jazzy, well, went through quite a few names in her lifetime.  She started out in India as Jyoti.  There, she wasn’t as happy as she could have been, she wanted more. When her husband was brutally murdered, she escaped India and came to America.  When Jyoti was with Prakash, she became Jasmine, “He wanted to break down the Jyoti I’d become in Hanaspur and make me a new kind of city woman.  To break off the past, he gave me a new name: Jasmine” (p 77).   She takes on this name as her new life.  She is completely in love with Prakash and desires the new identity that she has longed for.  When she tragically looses him in a bombing accident her world is crushed.  

When Jasmine first arrived in America, she was taken under the wing of a woman named Lillian.  “Lillian called me ‘Jazzy’” (p 133). She was “Jazzy in a T-shirt, tight cords, and running shoes” (p133).  She was a new person again!  Not because she was ashamed, just because she was embracing a new chapter in her life!  Jazzy is happy in her new life and is feeling more and more like she is belonging.  Her new name is like wiping the slate clean and starting over.  She doesn’t want to have to live in the past.  Lilian helps her get back on her feet and sends her out into the world.

From there, Jyoti/Jasmine/Jazzy, goes to work as a au pair in New York City.  She leads a very happy life with Taylor, Wylie, and Duff.  Yet again, she adopts a new name for another new chapter in her life, “Taylor called me ‘Jase’” (p 176).  Here she is a totally new person! “I liked the name he gave me: Jase.  Jase was a woman who bought herself spangled heels and silk chartreuse pants” (p 176).  She is able to be someone that she has never been before.  Again, she isn’t running from what she was in India, she is accepting her new life and loving it!  Jase ends up falling in love with Taylor, but she has to leave New York because she sees the man that murdered Prakash and is afraid for her new friends’ lives.

Jyoti/Jasmin/Jazzy/Jase than moves to Baden, Iowa, where she lives with Bud, who is the father of the baby she is carrying, but not her husband, yet.  She has started a new life again and has been given another new name. “Bud calls me Jane. Me Bud, you Jane….Calamity Jane. Jane as in Jane Russell, not Jane as in Plain Jane.  But Plane Jane is all want to be” (p 26).  Jane has taken on a new identity and is now a part of a slow farming town.  She seems content with her new life and new name.  I think that Jane seems to fit her new life just fine.  It could seem that she was running away from New York to try to forget her past, but it was only to keep Taylor and Duff safe.  She wasn’t trying to loose Jase; just start over again.  She doesn’t seem as happy in Iowa as she was in New York.  Nonetheless she embraces this new stage in her life and makes it the best she can. 

In the end, she leaves Iowa to be with Taylor and Duff.  Who knows if she goes back to being Jase or stays with Jane.  The way she continues to change her name is not a way of avoiding the past or trying to be someone different for somebody.  She embraces her new self and discovers different attributes about herself and just happens to change her name as well.  “I have had a husband for each of the women I have been.  Prakash for Jasmine, Taylor    for Jase, Bud for Jane, Half-Face for Kali” (p197).  As the book ends, Jase (I think she would stick with what Taylor calls her), seems to be happy with the life that she has found and ready to embrace it with Taylor.  “I realize I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane. Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through uncaulked windows” (p 240).  A new life that just happens to come with a new name, yet the same person.