TL;DR: I'm legally changing my name to Mia; if you haven't yet, please update your contact info.
Status update: name change application has been submitted. ETA of my certificate of name change and new birth certificate is early June.
I was using a nickname for almost three and a half years. And yet, it didn’t do what I wanted, needed it to do. After much (much) serious consideration of push and pull factors over probably decades, about in early February I had enough.
Time to be proactive and change my name.
It’s been more than thirty years living with my original name; I don’t want to live with it for another thirty.
So what name to pick?
It’s a name based on the past foundation my parents gave me. Literally, as I share below.
A name chosen for my own present and future. For the meanings and my spiritual connection to both names. The playfulness of its multiple word connections and associations.
The giddiness of using it and how my body/gut/soul feels when I read it or say it in my head or out loud.
A short stream of consciousness, before some meaningful and fun tidbits about my new name:
My “Starbucks name” was Abby. But Abby as a name for myself? No.
I considered Shayna/Shaina, since my mom sometimes called me Mona Shaina as a kid. But, since she doesn’t even remember doing that and doesn’t like Yiddish, no.
I searched for “easily pronounced names” online and found a reddit sub-thread with a list of names.
Mia stood out to me. And Maya.
Sam, no.
Then I looked up Hebrew names that started with “sh”.
Shulamit? No.
I laughed about Sheba (sheva= 7; a joke from elementary school was calling me shmona= 8). No more numbers! :P
Mia or Maya? Mia.
I considered using my middle name as my first name:
Ariela, or the originally-intended Ariel. But no. I’ve never bonded with that name, never felt like it fit as me.
What about Elle? Mia Elle. No, that’s not right. Ella.
» Mia Ella , מייה אלה «
[Pronounced ME-yah EH-la]
Meaningful and playful things about how my new name fits, in no particular order:
Kveller says Mia means dear, darling, mine (not only Hebrew) (I didn’t look it up anywhere else). Literally, from the Creator.
(I had an epiphany a few weeks ago that I loved myself (it’s true!). I have an email in my inbox from and to myself with the subject line ‘be incredibly fond of me’. It’s from a dvar torah/teaching that Hashem thinks of us incredibly fondly. So to treat yourself as such. I am dear and darling. Act like it.)
Mia and Ella are like the core, purpose version of my original name. the essence, with letters decluttered and moved around
(Ela looks nicer spelled as Ella)
take away “nosh” from “shimona” (lol. Bissli is superior to Noshkes) and you get “mia”
(the wordle/boggle-style game of rearranging letters to get new words from a longer word is a fantastically fun and engaging activity)
it’s still a meditation: Shimona, shma, shh-mm-ahh… to Mia, mee-yah.. A reminder
“M” is how I’d balance my name, the letter I’d put down on the paper first to center my name
(In elementary school when we’d draw our names all the time; ‘m’ is the middle letter of shimona. Pretty difficult to get balanced though since the 6 other letters aren’t the all same width.)
(I delighted in referring to a nibling as M instead of the full name. Now I can use it for myself! Auntie M!) [my mom’s Auntie V)
both Mia and Ella end with an “a” like Shimona and Ariela. I like the rhyming and it matching/parallel to each other and my original name
my new initials are MEH (ahah). better than SAH
(because it seemed unfinished so I’d always add a ‘D’ since it… Ending it with anything else, like a ‘M’, for example, has literally only ocurred to me once, while typing this..)
MH - M feels more balanced than S. I like how supported structurally/architecturally M is (and E, to a lesser extend; yet still more so than S)
M is for Marion, E is for Edna (my grandmothers’ English names, Z”L)
ME
:))
I like that I’m resurrecting an old Jewish practice. Of changing your first name to mark a status change, embark on a new era. (It hasn’t only been done if super sick.)
Onwards as Mia Ella Hirchberg
(still and always a Hirchberg, still me)
Until next time,
-Mia
Thank you for honouring this.
