Pod Insights The Moth What’s in a Name: The Moth Podcast About this episode On this episode, we have two stories about names - the names of people, the names of concept, and how naming can shape the essence of the thing.
This episode was hosted by Jodi Powell.
Storytellers:
Elyse Mcinerney reckons with her name.
Ryan Estrada accidentally invents a new word.
Transcript 0:02 Speaker 00 Welcome to The Moth. I'm Jodie Powell. I've thought a lot about the names of things. What's in a 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 McInerny, who told this at a Melbourne Story Slam where the theme was green.
0:47 Speaker 00 Here's Elise, live at The Moth.
0:51 Speaker 01 Ever since I can remember, I have hated my surname. McInerny. 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 McKinney? Elise McKerny? Elise McInerny? 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 inelegant as McInerny 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 your last name again?" And as I got older, my surname took on some additional baggage.
1:35 Speaker 01 My parents divorced when I was 12, and my mother quite reasonably chose not to keep her ex-husband's surname. And after the divorce, my relationship with my father deteriorated pretty quickly. We had a lot of counselling during my teens, but nothing ever really got better. As I got into my twenties, I found myself in a cycle of just never-ending hurt 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 cease all contact with my dad. And in doing so, I lost my connection to my extended McInerny family too.
2:16 Speaker 01 And so the name McInerney started to hurt a lot more than just my ears, but my heart a little bit too. I felt set adrift 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 ceased contact with my dad, his sixtieth birthday was approaching. And while I knew that I'd made the right and the necessary decision, it didn't make it easy in 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.
2:58 Speaker 01 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 loved the stories of magic and mythology, I loved the music, and the idea of sitting in a cosy pub corner with a pint and 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 McInerneys hadn't lived in Ireland for generations, there was
3:43 Speaker 01 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 Elise McInerney." 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 lilt that made it sound almost pretty. And I did all the touristy things. I stared in awe at the cliffs of Moher and I kissed the Blarney Stone, I drank a pint of Guinness at the Guinness Brewery and had a whisky at the Jamieson Distillery, I wandered the streets of Dublin and Limerick and Galway. And I felt a sense of peace wash over me as I sat in a bus blasting the Coals and Cranberries
4:27 Speaker 01 on my headphones, watching those green hills roll by.
4:32 Speaker 01 And as we're getting to the end of the tour, after a big day of sightseeing, I woke up from a nap on the bus. And I grabbed my phone to see how long away we were from the hotel. And when I looked at the map, I realised we were about to turn into a village called Six Mile Bridge, which I recognised as the village that my line of McInerneys 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 colourful buildings along narrow roads. And then I saw, in faded blue paint, on an old pub, the word McInerneys.
5:14 Speaker 01 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 cemeteries. 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.
5:48 Speaker 00 That was Elise McInerney. Elise is the older sister to five siblings, an aunt to three nibblings, and a willing servant to two cats. When she's not on the Melbourne Moth Store Slam stage, she works in social policy or can be found snorkelling along Melbourne's beaches. We asked her if her feelings 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 become an aunt with two nieces and a nephew, and can't wait to take them travelling one day so they can find their own places in the world that make them feel at home.
6:32 Speaker 00 Elise's story had me thinking about my name. I currently go by Jodie Powell, but my actual name is Jodie 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? Jodie 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 of 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 reintroduce myself as Jodie Anne Powell, one of the many folks still growing into their names.
7:17 Speaker 00 Up next, another story about a name. One that you might already have a strong feeling about. Back in a moment.
7:27 Speaker 00 Welcome back. Our next story is from Ryan Estrada, who told this at an Ann Arbor Story Slam where the theme was style. Here's Ryan, live at the mark.
7:41 Speaker 02 I've never really considered myself a style icon.
7:46 Speaker 02 In fact, back when I was a kid, there were 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 that did 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.
8:17 Speaker 02 Which made it really, I had this really weird day back in 2016.
8:23 Speaker 02 It was the day before my 36th, or, uh, my... How old was I? I don't know. I was getting old. And, uh, so, uh, I log into my computer and I see all of these alerts coming. I'm like, "Oh, that's nice. My friends are wishing me a happy birthday." They were not.
8:45 Speaker 02 Uh, 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 gonna 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'm trying to figure what's going on. I scroll up, and they're all replying to a link to the dictionary.
9:10 Speaker 02 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 clicks later, and I see, "Created by cartoonist Ryan Estrada."
9:43 Speaker 02 I haven't left my house in a month. How do these people know how I'm dressing?
9:49 Speaker 02 It took some investigation work to figure out what was going on here. Apparently, a couple of years before that, I'd had this ridiculous deadline, where I had to make 100 comics in a month. I don't know if anyone here makes comics. 100 comics is a lot of comics to make in a month. You go a little crazy, you don't sleep, and I was writing and illustrating comics that I had 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 a bunch, made up a bunch of completely ridiculous trends. And the punchline, the last panel, was the stupidest fashion trend that my sleep-deprived brain could think of: normcore, which I defined as wearing only completely ordinary clothes
10:33 Speaker 02 and only using slang after it had appeared in a sitcom.
10:38 Speaker 02 Unbeknownst to me, a couple of 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, that saw this on Urban Dictionary and wrote a piece about how normcore was the next big thing.
10:57 Speaker 02 Which led to every single trend-setting magazine, blog, newspaper, writing articles about how normcore was the stupidest thing in the world.
11:09 Speaker 02 I do not read any trend-setting magazines because apparently I'm normcore.
11:15 Speaker 02 So I knew none of this was happening until it was nominated for Word of the Year.
11:22 Speaker 02 Once I found that out, it was everywhere. GQ referred to it as "a stupid trend made up by idiots."
11:32 Speaker 02 Which I was kind of offended by. "It's a stupid trend made by un-idiot." 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 in interviews. And finally, two of my favorite TV characters, Rosa Diaz and Ron Swanson, were expressed disgust at the word normcore on their respective sitcoms. The word normcore was now normcore enough to be normcore.
12:08 Speaker 02 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.
12:32 Speaker 00 That was Ryan Estrada. Ryan is an artist, author, and adventurer who travels the world making comics such as The Freeman Award-winning Band Book Club, No Rules Tonight, and Good Old Fashioned 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, call 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 Moth. No matter what projects you choose to devote your time and energy on, you never know what
13:15 Speaker 00 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.
13:39 Speaker 03 Jodi Ann Powell is a director and educator at The Moth who enjoys listening to and seeking stories from beyond the main corridors. Originally from Jamaica, she currently lives in Harlem. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Kluchay, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardenale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Ureña. The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers.
14:21 Speaker 03 For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.
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