Names are such an interesting thing… You’re given your name by someone that’s just met you. Most people don’t even name a pet until they live with it for a few days! That’s a lot of pressure to get the name right. Will the name you choose allow this person to become anything they want to when they grow up? I had a friend who would try out names for her unborn child by prefacing it with, “Reporting from the White House, I’m ____” to make sure it seemed like it would match the job.
You have a first name and usually a middle name to choose, and the last name tends to be the father’s last name. And that’s the way it was with me.
My mom tells the story that my first name was supposed to be Kirsten, but after a rough delivery she changed it to Christie as it was an easier name and she thought I’d already had a hard enough time. Turns out, Christie is not “easy.” Almost everyone somehow sees an extra “n” in there and thinks my name is Christine, or mis-hears me and thinks my name is Crissy, or Kristen… It’s kind of hilarious how often this “simple” name involves spelling errors and correcting people’s pronunciation.
My middle name is in honor of my paternal grandfather, Leon – Lee for short. It’s been said that he wasn’t looking forward to being a grandfather but then fell head over heels in love with me the minute he saw me. My whole life he would just look at me and beam and tell me in his Long Island accent, “Baby, you’re da greatest.” I don’t know why he loved me so much. Maybe because I had his name?
My last name was my dad’s last name, Gimpel. The story goes that our original last name was longer but was shortened to Gimpel when Abraham Gimpel came through Ellis Island from Russia, but I’m still hoping to find proof of that in all of my ancestry research.
My baby book got lost during my childhood but I do have the birth announcement that my parents sent out. There is a grainy photo of me at 3 hours old. I’m a little crosseyed, with a blanket covering my smooshed ear from a forceps delivery. Written in hot pink Flair pen is my mother’s neat block handwriting: Christie Lee Gimpel. And that stayed my name until I was 6.
My parents divorced and my mom quickly remarried. The way I remember it, my little brother and I were told that “Mr. Ward and I are getting married and you’ll call him Dad and we are moving to England.” I don’t remember there being a lot of discussion around it. We got our first passports and there in block letters, our last name said Ward. From that moment on, our names were changed. I’ve heard conflicting reasons why. But the name Ward stayed, even when the abusive stepfather it came from left our lives for good while I was in college.
When I got married at the age of 26, I was excited to shed the baggage and the last name and take the name of my husband to be, Spencer. Two babies joined our little Spencer family in 1998 and 2001. When we got divorced I kept the name because it was the name of my children and I wanted to feel a part of them, even on the days when they weren’t at my house. We were a unit.
Three years ago when my wife and I got married, neither of us felt that sharing a name was necessary to share a life, and after both of us going through name changes previously, we were not interested in doing that again.
And then. One day shortly before my 50th birthday, I woke up and was just simply ready to reclaim my name. As my children have grown into wonderful, independent young adults, my need to have a name that matched theirs has faded. And after working on my genealogy, I realized how much I wanted my name to reflect my history and my family. Whether it’s in my relationship or my name, I didn’t want to wait one more second to be the person I am supposed to be.
And so, life has come full circle. Announcing Christie Lee Gimpel. Should I send out announcements in hot pink pen? 😂
