What's In A Name?

I pulled out this collection of small bottles of port from the back of my kitchen cabinet where they’ve sat forgotten for years. I bought these in Porto in 2015 when I did my Portuguese Camino. I bought them of course strictly because of the name – Pinto. My maiden name was Pinto, and with my heritage being Goan, my roots can be traced back to Portugal. 

There used to be a car that Ford made that was called a Pinto. It got a bad rap. “Hit it from behind and it will blow up,” they said. And yes, I heard that joke a few times. As well as a Pinto being a horse and a bean.

But I gave up my maiden name when I got married. I went from being Pearl Pinto to Pearl Richard. In our youthful naivete, my to-be-husband and I struck a deal: he would quit smoking, I would change my name to his. I kept my side of the deal. When we separated after fourteen years of marriage, and eventually got our divorce years later, I did not revert to my maiden name of Pinto.

By then, we had a daughter who carried the name Richard. As her mother, it felt simpler to keep it. I had a career and passport and various documents in the name of Richard. Procrastination is my middle name and I detest paper-work and administrative tasks. Besides, I had no desire to revert to the name Pinto. Richard was more neutral, more mainstream. A foreign-sounding name on a resumé would often rule you out of an interview before you even got a chance to smile and shake their hand.

So…some thirty-seven years later, I am still a Richard, still faithful to pronouncing it the French way (Rish-ard) as it was when I originally acquired it.

But sometimes I find myself wondering…what if I had retained my Pinto name? Would life have turned out a little differently? 

What's in a name? Does it open some doors and close others? These days young women rarely change their names when they get married. It seems such an archaic thing to do. Why give up the name and identity you carried until your marriage?

Pearl Pinto has an alliterative echo to it that Pearl Richard does not. Should Pearl Pinto be my pen name? I understand there aren’t many (any?) administrative tasks involved in using a pen name. But then, to have a pen name, one should be published.  One day…

This is the year to crack open those bottles of Pinto Port.