Ornoth

It’s time to come clean and clear up a falsehood that I’ve been telling for decades. Ornoth is not my birth name.

I changed my legal name back in 1994. But ever since then, when someone asked where the name “Ornoth” comes from, I told them it was an old family name with no particular meaning or history or derivation other than prior use. I didn’t think it would be flattering or to my advantage to admit that I’d changed my name or to reveal its origin, so I very purposefully kept it hidden.

Why am I revealing this now? Well, at my age I no longer feel compelled to protect a career, a reputation, or a fragile ego. And in this time where people are allowed to redefine all aspects of their identities, a simple name change doesn’t carry the stigma it once did. And having first started using Ornoth as a moniker fifty years ago, there’s no question that making it my legal name was a good long-term decision. Looking back on it, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Coat of arms of Orny (Switzerland)

If you want to know the whole story, you’re gonna have to sit down and allow your author to relate this story in the third person, present tense…

Journey with me back five decades to 1976: to a 6th grade English class. An awkward 13 year old kid named David listens attentively as Mrs. Bernier reads J.R.R. Tolkien’s children’s fantasy novel “The Hobbit” to the class. Within a year, the boy enthusiastically plows through Tolkien’s more ambitious three-volume followup: “The Lord of the Rings”.

By chance, around this time he sees a newspaper article about a slightly older kid named Gary: an internationally-known Tolkien fanatic who lives an hour away. They meet up, start recruiting others, and create the New England Tolkien Society: a group of adolescent fans who regularly get together for events that feature discussions, trivia, music, camping, cooking, contests, and costumes.

Along with their costumes, everyone’s got a Middle-earth alter-ego persona. Gary dresses appropriately as a Hobbit called Hidifons. There’s Elven maids named Lothiriel and Therindel, a bard named Dæron, a pack of irascible Dwarves, and a few dozen others.

So David needs to come up with a Tolkien-inspired persona and his “Hobbit name”. Consulting Ruth Noel’s book “The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth”, he mashes together the Elvish words “orn” (meaning “tree”) and “loth” (“flower” or “blossom”) in an attempt to capture the image of the fragrant lilac trees that herald Maine’s brief spring. Thus, he announces himself to his fellow fans as “Ornoth”.

By nature extremely analytical, introverted, and solitary, a curious thing happens as our protagonist proceeds through his high school years. At Tolkien gatherings, he starts making friends, clowning around, acting silly, and flirting with the girls, who playfully shorten his nickname to “Orny”. Being outgoing is so completely out of character for him that he thinks of himself as having two separate and distinct personalities: one named David, who is a quiet, jaded, introverted loner; and the other named Orny, who is impulsive, energetic, and gregarious. “Ornoth” is also the name and persona that he carries with him when he begins attending medieval recreationist events put on by the Society for Creative Anachronism.

The awkwardness of maintaining two separate names and personalities comes to a head when he leaves for college, where he repeatedly winds up living with roommates who share the given name David. Partly out of simple convenience and partly to lean into his outgoing persona rather than the introverted one, he uses “Orny” throughout his college years. After using it for more than a decade, he has become more comfortable identifying as Ornoth – or Orny – than as David.

However, he has to revert to using his given name during the decade following college graduation, which brings marriage and a budding professional career. After several years of early success, both these endeavors flounder, as he is forced out by new management at work, and undergoes a divorce that is partially attributable to the cold dispassion of his predominant “David” persona.

The year was 1992; I was about to turn thirty, my life had fallen apart, and I longed to return to the carefree ease of my days in college and Tolkien fandom.

But this misfortune was also the watershed moment that spurred tremendous changes in my life. I reached out and reconnected with some of my old friends from college. I re-assumed leadership of the electronic writing project I’d left six years earlier. I grew my hair long for the first time and started hanging out in the Boston nightclub and music scenes. I got involved in the local BDSM and polyamory communities. I got an exciting and profitable new job at a cutting-edge consulting firm near M.I.T. where my skills were highly valued. I briefly lived with my old high school girlfriend before finally moving from the distant suburbs into the heart of the city. And I took up cycling again after a decades-long hiatus.

In all these different environments, I went by “Ornoth” or “Orny”, resurrecting the name that I identified with, that represented the kind of person I wanted to be, and which was used by all my friends, both old and new. At the same time, I finally started working to integrate the two halves of my bifurcated self-image: the methodical intellectual and the playful impulsive.

And it was time to finally leave “David” behind, a name that I found uncomfortable, that had unpleasant associations, and was only used by family members.

But my family provided an intimidating obstacle: telling my very conservative parents – who had given me my birth name, after all – that I wanted to legally change it. Fortunately, by then I’d gained the self-confidence to express myself firmly, so they couldn’t do much more than choose to ignore it.

So after nearly twenty years of using it informally, in late June of 1994 I went to probate court and had my name formally changed, taking Ornoth as my first name, and demoting “David” to one of now two middle names. As such things usually go, it was both an immense fundamental change and an anticlimactic formality.

That was thirty years ago this week, and there hasn’t been a single second when I’ve regretted it. Ornoth is who I am, who I have been for nearly all of my life, and how everyone knows me. “David” sounds as alien to my ears as Billy-Joe-Bob.

The only times I was the least bit equivocal about it was when I was introduced to someone new. When the inevitable “What kind of name is that?” question came up, I always fell back on a convenient lie: that it was just an old family name with no specific derivation. But today that equivocation officially ceases, as I take unapologetic and public ownership of this deeply meaningful life choice.

As you might imagine, having a unique name comes with advantages and disadvantages. For some people, it’s easier to remember a name that’s distinctive, but many folks require time and repetition to commit it to memory. So it has often gotten shortened to Orny, Orn, or even just O. People often mishear the ‘th’ and call me “Ornoff”; another common error is “Ornath”; and sometimes people misread a printed ‘rn’ as an ‘m’ and see “Omoth”. Such is the price we pay for being unique.

On the other hand, picking a username is a breeze; I’ve never had to resign myself to being “DAVID783” or the like. Googling has revealed that there are small towns called Orny in both France and Switzerland (see the latter’s coat of arms in the image above), and at least one person in Germany has Ornoth as a surname. And there are several fantasy- and gaming-related websites using Ornoth as the name of a fictional character, which always feels a bit ironic.

Having thought of myself as Ornoth for half a century, it’s not just a part of me; it is me. But so is the entire story of how it became my name: its origin, etymology, and literal meaning; its central role in my social and emotional growth; how I reclaimed it as part of a major mid-life revitalization; and how it prompted me to finally stand up to parental authority.

And while I’m very happy that today literally everyone knows me as Ornoth, I’ve always self-consciously kept all that backstory hidden. But the story behind my name is one that deserves to be claimed and celebrated, and I’m happy to share it with you today on this personally meaningful anniversary.

I haven’t made a lot of noise about my mother’s death in January, and I don’t intend that to change. Everyone has their own method of dealing with loss, and I feel that making a big emotional scene is about the least respectful thing I could do in most cases.

I’m also not going to devote any more space in my blog to the hardships of five months away from home, enduring a very much unwanted Maine winter. There’s no need to discuss my role as caregiver during the ups and downs of her hospitalization, my tasks arranging the funeral, dealing with probate, selling her car and furniture, closing her apartment, and wrapping up her finances. I’ll even skip over seeing members of my family and a few long-lost high school friends I caught up with.

I’ll only briefly mention the powerful sense of relief once I had all those things behind me, and how very, very, very good it has been to finally be back home.

It sounds like I’ve ruled out just about everything I could possibly write, thus obviating any need for this post. But no, there is one thing I do want to share, and that’s a handful of laughs. One of that trip’s bigger realizations was how deeply important humor is to me, and its usefulness as a way to cope with even the most stressful times.

Amidst all the difficulties of the past four months, there were a handful of precious smiles worth remembering. Here’s a few.

One morning my brother and I were at her nursing home with my mother when she required emergency transport to the hospital. When the EMTs showed up, I briefed them on her condition, what medication she was on and when she had last taken each, the measures the nursing home had taken in response to her situation, and so forth. I was apparently so organized and on top of the medical lingo that—as I later found out—they actually thought I was the resident doctor!

During her emergency room trips, my brother and I sometimes hung out in the ER’s little kitchen area. Being me, I snooped through their cupboards and was surprised to find a gallon jug of molasses. Wondering what the heck they’d need so much molasses for, I consulted Google and immediately regretted it. Whatever you do, *DO* *NOT* google “emergency room molasses”!

At one point she was in the cardiac unit and a nurse and I were helping her walk. She fainted in our arms, and since the nurse was unable to reach a call button, she slapped a button pinned on her uniform. “CODE YELLOW, CCU ROOM 1! CODE YELLOW, CCU ROOM 1!” blared over the intercom and more than a dozen doctors and nurses ran into the room. Apparently “code yellow” is their shorthand for “patient out of control”, normally used for unruly or violent situations; kind of silly for an unconscious 90 year-old!

She was in and out of the hospital several times, occupying a dozen different rooms. However, after a two week stay in Room 118, her next readmission was coincidentally right back in to the same familiar room.

At one point, a prisoner from some local jail was in for treatment, with a policeman posted outside his room. His family brought a cat in with them for a visit, which is pretty surprising to begin with, in a hospital. But apparently the cat got loose in the middle of the night, resulting in a penitentiary-style lockdown of the ward and all the patient rooms until they recaptured it!

Whenever a newborn was delivered in obstetrics, they played a lullaby tune over the intercom. My mother enjoyed hearing it, although it felt very odd to hear it playing during two of my mother’s worse sessions.

The hospital allows visiting family to raid the small kitchens in the ward, so my brother and I started enjoying free ice creams during our occasional opportunities to step out of her room. I joked that I was doing my part to increase US healthcare costs.

One of the few things my mother would reliably eat was milkshakes, made with two cups of ice cream. So when the floor ran out of ice cream, my brother and I blamed her (even if we’d eaten more than our fair share)!

The doctors also ordered that the staff keep tabs on my mother’s blood sugar levels. We joked that it was because so much of their ice cream had disappeared…

It confused the hell out of me that I couldn’t buy a sugared cola drink anywhere in the entire facility: not on the floors, not in the ER, not in the cafeteria or coffee shop, nor in any of their vending machines. Apparently sugar is strictly verboten! But I couldn’t square that with all the free ice cream stocked on the floors for patients and family!

Ordering lunch one day from “Room Service” (when I worked there as a high school student, it was called “Dietary”), my mother wanted tomato soup. Asked if she wanted a bowl or a cup of soup, mom asked for a bowlful of tomato soup, but in a cup…

Auto-on, motion-detecting faucets… Great for keeping one’s hands sanitary, but a complete disaster when they’re placed in the only open section of countertop in the room. On multiple times someone would move mom’s dinner tray to the counter next to the sink, only to have the faucet helpfully spray the tray, the person, and entire room with water.

Although we came to know most of the hospital staff by name, one day a new nurse came in. Seeing two guests, she asked, “Husband and son, I presume?” Yeah, no. My brother might be aging, but he was still 22 years younger than my mother. I might better understand “Son and grandson”, since there’s nearly a full generation between he and I…

Her treatment included regular doses of morphine, which naturally zonked her out. Even at her worst, just before a new dose she would relate a list of things like medications that the nurse should know about and take care of before she “lost time” due to the effects of the morphine. My mother was always both very organized and very much a take-charge person.

She had been a lifelong nurse, so there were some things in life that were normal for us but which seem strange in retrospect. For example, most kitchens have a pair of tongs for grabbing hot items like baked potato or corn on the cob. We didn’t have that… Mom had several old pairs of stainless steel surgical forceps that she used for cooking!

And finally, the thing I think is ludicrous but which no one else seems to appreciate. Mom would naturally use empty cans or plastic containers to store stuff in. In cleaning out her freezer, I came across a couple plastic tubs that originally held a spread product called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!”, which my mother used for storing… (wait for it…) butter! Doh!

These were the kinds of things that kept us on our toes and provided brief moments of much-needed levity during an incredibly stressful time. Looking back, some of them remind me that my mother was a normal person. Normal people have all kinds of quirks and idiosyncrasies, which you discover during the rare times when you have to pore over their belongings in detail.

Yesterday I was reminded of my introduction to fishing…

Each year, my parents and I would spend a week in the back woods of Maine at a camp owned by my uncle. My father fancied himself quite a sportsman, and I must have been about five years old when he brought me out in the boat with him for the first time.

While I don’t recall the specific event, I definitely remember the emotions involved. First you had to take a worm—pretty gross in and of itself—and then jab a hook through it multiple times. I didn’t know whether members of Phylum Annelida felt pain, but the thing was clearly displeased, squirming around in what appeared to be pain. I guess I didn’t really get why causing this thing pain was such a good thing.

Then there was actually catching fish. When you think about it, it’s an awfully brutal process. The fish attempts to ingest a barbed hook, then you drag the thing back to your boat by the hook, which is embedded in its face or esophagus, while it’s fighting against it all the time. Then you drag it into the boat, where it immediately begins to suffocate. Finally, if the little bugger doesn’t suffocate quickly enough to suit you, you club the little fucker with the little miniature baseball bat you keep just for that purpose. Even as a kid, I was repelled by the barbarism of it all.

Of course, that’s not the end of the story. You’ve still gotta cut the head and tail off, rip the scales off, and take all the guts out. And then you eat it, which never made any sense to me, since I’ve never liked the taste of fish, anyways.

I don’t know whether that event set the stage for a lifetime of sensitivity, or whether it was just the first time some existing predisposition of mine was violated. But either way, I find I’ve been sensitized about harming others. I know other people are different, and that’s fine, but harming any animal seems to be a very deep violation of my base character. Not that I particularly wanted it to be that way; that’s just what I’ve observed.

All this came up yesterday while I was meditating. I’ve taken to finding a quiet place near work and sitting for half an hour at lunch. Yesterday I found a dock near where the Charles empties into Boston Harbor

While I was sitting, two guys came along, cast a line into the harbor and immediately got a strike. As they hauled the fish in, I stayed and observed it all, including his partner enthusiastically egging the fisherman on about eating his catch.

It brought up all those visceral feelings I had about hunting and fishing, and made me think about this year’s New Year’s resolution: to eat vegetarian one day a week. I’d made that decision primarily for ethical reasons, and I’ve been able to keep to it without abrogation. On the other hand, it’s been kind of inconvenient, and I had begun thinking about whether I’d continue that practice once 2007 is over.

Needless to say, yesterday’s event convinced me to continue. The question now is whether I want to get more ambitious and go for two days a week. I’m undecided on that one. As I said a year ago, I really love meat, but on the other hand I’m making a concerted effort to live according to my higher principles. Perhaps I’ll just shoot for two days a week, but forgive myself if there are weeks where I only do one. After all, the goal is gradual improvement, and as many dieters know, viewing it as a binary all-or-nothing proposition just makes it more difficult to succeed.

But for now, I just figured I’d share those thoughts, and note that after my meditation, I decided I wouldn’t go for pastrami or my favorite cajun chicken quesadilla, but had cheese tortoloni instead.