Our names in the world

There are many Jewish family names that are matronymics. We know people with the family name Sorkin- Sarah's child, or Mirkin -Miriam's child or Dvorkin- D'vorah's child.


When I taught daycare the family circumstances of the kids I taught were often complicated. A child might be living with her parents or with her father and his girlfriend, or her mother and her new husband or have two moms or two dads. I solved my problem of how to refer to the parents by calling  the adults in the child's life Mr. Child's Name or Mrs. Child's Name no matter what the exact relationship to the child was. Mr. Joey was Joey's male adult that I was speaking to no matter what his relationship was to the constellation of adults caring for that child. The same went for Mrs. Joey. my solution was at the same time exact and inexact.

I was surprised at how many of the children's names I remembered in this photo.

Once I had children I was faced with what my children's friends would call me. The kids I knew well called me by my first name, as I had requested them to. Once my kids started school their friends called me different things.

Children whose parents or grandparents came from the South tended to call me Miss Sarah.  Frankly, that made me uncomfortable.  To me it reeked of Southern Plantations . It took me several years to learn that being called Miss Sarah wasn't  upholding a creepy racist past but was in fact the way well brought up children were taught to refer to adults who came into their lives.  I learned to hear Miss. Sarah as a gift from the parents and grandparents of the child asking me  for another cookie. It took me a really long time to learn that.

Others of my children's friends used to call me something that I just loved. They used to call me ______'s Mama, as if that were my proper name.  It was a name that felt like it came out of ancient New York City  streets and playgrounds.  I loved the mix of the familiar and polite in that name.

Several years ago I was greeted  really warmly on the street by a young man who I did not recognize. I guess my face showed  that I had no clue who that young man was. He said " I'm Saul, Ellen's Saul!."  I knew Saul from the time he was in diapers. I hadn't seen him since he was a little kid, and now he was a young man who shaved, and he was Ellen's Saul. I embraced him, we chatted, and both went on our way.


My youngest has been working at Trader Joe's.  Again and again customers ask him if he is Sarah's ______. My son answers that indeed he is mine. I so love the sense of belonging implied by these relational names.  I am of my children, and they are of me.