What's In A Name?

Mister, Mr, Mx?

Being called "Mister/Mr" gives me a lot of gender euphoria, I have to admit. In particular, I sometimes ask romantic partners to call me "Mister" (just that, not "Mr Barnes" just "Mister" on its own) as a pet name (it's something one of my first gay partners did when I was very early in transition, so it always gives me that warm fuzzy loved up feeling). But being called "Mr Barnes" also makes me feel good, (if a little weird in that "Mr Barnes is my father!" kind of way.)

However, on documents, whenever the option is available, I will often choose the "Mx" option. I prefer the term "genderqueer" over "non-binary" but either way, I do feel like parts of my gender and other identities exist outside of a binary, and seeing "Mx" on my post or my bank cards also makes me feel "seen." I don't feel the same if people verbalise that title though (and besides is it "Mix" or "Mux" or "Moox" or what??)

So if you want to refer to me formally, call me 'Mr' verbally but in writing you can use 'Mx'. Thank you!

Rev., Brother, or Other?

When it comes to Honorific titles, to denote my profession or professional relationship with others, especially in the capacity of spiritual leadership, I have been all around the block.

"Rev." is a title I... well, I guess I revere it. I have a lot of respect for it. So much so that, even though it's a more regular and familiar title, and more likely to be found on an online dropdown list of titles, I don't feel right using it for myself. Again, there's an element of "Rev. Barnes is my dad!" but mostly it's that I simply haven't really been ordained (I really don't think the ULC ordination counts!) so I don't have a right to the title.

And there is just NO WAY I could handle being called "Father" anything.

"Brother" on the other hand, I feel very differently about. This title is usually used to refer to members of (usually Christian) religious or spiritual group, fraternity or "brotherhood." It indicates membership of a group, who share an expressed value or belief system and certain lifestyles. Most people associate the term with members of a monastery.

I have always been interested in monastic life, and on many occasions felt called to one or the other; being trans has always been the main sticking point. 

In 2019 I got to fulfil a long held desire to visit Taizé, an ecumenical Christian monastic fraternity in Saône-et-Loire, Burgundy, France. Getting a taste of an austere and contemplative life really fulfilled me in so many ways; I have one story (perhaps to be shared some other time) from that period that demonstrates how my spiritual guides might lead me both directly into monastic and contemplative ascetism but also lead me in completely opposite directions, with equal sacredness.

Shortly after that trip I was invited to join an "intentional spiritual co-habiting community" though this never quite got off the ground. I was so excited by the whole idea, and wrote thousands of words about what my ideal intentional community might look (and sound and smell and taste and feel!) like. In the process I sort of formed my own (still slightly nebulous but increasingly less so) "Rule of Life." When the COVID19 pandemic hit I had the opportunity to put some of those ideas into practice more fervently.

Setting the whole issue of fraternities, monastic or otherwise, aside, I like the title "Brother" because it gives a feeling of closeness, and above all equality, the way "Reverend" and "Father" and such do not. Those titles tend to have the effect of elevating a person above others, while "Brother" indicates a more parallel relationship, while still indicating that the bearer of the title has some special set-apart-ness for spiritual discipline and service.

I've been using the title "Brother" or "Br" more and more recently, with lots of positive feedback, and I think I shall do so more often going forward. A Brother without a fraternity; perhaps my Community will find me, instead of the other way around.

Like many trans people, I have eschewed the name I was given at birth. Even before I was trans I knew I was trans I had a very hostile relationship with my name. My parents were proud of it; they made it up themselves, by combining the names of their own mothers, and it was unique. As a consequence it constantly proved difficult for others to spell and pronounce. I was forever correcting people on both accounts, and it annoyed me to no end. As time went on I also had a hostile relationship with my paternal grandmother, eventually breaking ties with her completely around the age of 18, so naturally I didn't want her name dwelling within my own.

I will tell you that "Aaron" is not actually an enormous departure from my birth name. It was almost a letter by letter transformation.

(I will share something that I know to be true of The Trans Community, though I cannot back this assertion with evidence. We LOVE weird names, weird spellings of otherwise normal names, and we seem to be obsessed with the letters K, Q, X, Y, and Z. Also, there is a very strange pattern of trans men being obsessed with names that rhyme with "Aiden." Kayden, Zayden, Rayden, Bladen... So. If you ever meet a "Hayden" or an "Erique" or "Xella" or encounter a group with four or five guys named "Zander" then be warned my friend... the Trans Folks are likely upon you!)

Yes, my name went through many iterations, before I landed on Aaron.

I settled on it at a time when I was very interested in prophets and prophecies, as well as a time when I was reconnecting with my Jewish roots. It was while reading the Biblical Exodus story that I encountered Aaron, the Brother of Moses.

You may be unfamiliar with the specifics, but most people know the basic story of the great prophet Moses: It's Egypt, the Pharaoh is killing Hebrew male babies, Moses is recently born, his mother puts him in a basket and shoves him down the river, where he's found by an Egyptian princess and raised as an Egyptian Prince. He grows up, there is An Incident causing Moses to run away, he joins a tribe in the desert, becomes a shepherd. One day he's out with the sheep, he sees a curious thing, a bush that is on fire but doesn't burn up. Then he hears the voice of God coming from the bush. God tells Moses to go back to Egypt and free the Hebrews. Moses protests. A discussion ensues.

At some point Moses points out that he is no orator. Depending on the translation or interpretation, he may have some sort of speech impediment like a stutter or a lisp, or a condition like ankyloglossia, or it may just be that he has chronic social anxiety. Either way, Moses says "But me no talk good!" (Exodus 6:12/:30) So God says "I'm going to send your brother Aaron to do the fancy talking." Turns out Moses has an oldest sister Miriam, and an older brother Aaron, who are both prophets in their own right.

Then, Aaron and Moses go to Pharaoh on several occasions asking for the freedom of the Hebrew, and for much of the time during the Ten Plagues visited on the Egyptians it's Aaron who does the main talky bits, being eloquent and persuasive, and also does some of the fancy magic in the early demonstrations.

So, we have Aaron in two important roles: as eloquent speaker for those who cannot speak for themselves (both Moses and, importantly, the Hebrew slaves) and as a good big brother looking after his younger sibling. Two roles that I aspire to excel in, as the older brother with three  younger siblings, and as someone whose professions all require Public Speaking in some capacity.

But there's more!

Later on in the story of the Hebrews deliverance from slavery, they find themselves in a desert, and while Moses goes up a mountain for fourty days and nights, not only to receive the tablets with the Ten Commandments on them but a whole lot of other instructions (like, several chapters worth) eventually the Hebrews get fed up and go to Aaron whining that they want to worship a tangible god, one they can see and touch. This is where that pesky Golden Calf (Exodus 32) comes to play; Aaron collects gold from the people and makes a statue for them, which they immediately start to worship, for which there are a number of terrible consequences.

This is important to me because it shows Aaron to be terribly prone to being a people pleaser, despite the fact that he and his descendents would be marked for Priesthood, with a specific role of being "decision makers." Aaron fucks up pretty dramatically, and his people suffer for his (and their) mistakes.

So I carry the name Aaron to remind myself to be decisive, to be wary of being a people pleaser, and to stay humble, because I too am likely to make huge mistakes with lasting effects on others as well as myself.

Looking into the history and etymology of the name "Aaron" (or "Aharon" as it really should be pronounced) is also enlightening, pride-giving, and humbling all at once, but I have written long enough on this.

In the end, I am proud to bear the name Aaron, for so many reasons, not least of which is in honour of my Jewish heritage.

My middle name is Llywd, which is a fairly common Welsh name, often anglicised as "Lloyd" but with the Welsh doubl-L reduced to a single L sound.

For a time I wanted to change my last/"family" name as well as my first, as I felt distanced from my family for a long time. The last name I wanted was "Grey." This was in recognition of all the liminal spaces I inhabit, the "neither-this-nor-that"-ness I have always experienced. Living in the "shades of grey" of life.

Eventually I decided that I did want to have the same surname as my parents and siblings, so I kept it, and moved "grey" to my middle name.

I chose a Welsh name because I also have Welsh ancestry which I wanted to honour. Also, the Welsh language is naturally very poetic, and the name Llwyd is quite beautiful in its meaning. It doesn't just mean "grey" but it refers to a sort of silvery grey colour, and also the greyness of mist and fog.

I complained earlier about my first name given at birth being difficult to spell and pronounce. I suppose my annoyance eventually turned into a kind of spiteful pride, because I transferred both of these difficulties over to my middle name, though of course I experience peope's frustration less frequently as I don't use my middle name that often. If you'd like to know how to pronounce it you can see if this link helps.

I settled on this name shortly before returning to the UK, and shortly after I moved back, but before I officially changed my legal name, I made a visit to Wales and went on a pilgrimage to a sacred place and commune with the Genius Loci there, and received confirmation that it was right for me to take a Welsh name. That confirmed it for me, and so I changed my legal name (in the UK) in October of 2011.

I mentioned that I considered changing my family name. This felt like an easy move, not only because for awhile I was slightly estranged from my family, but also because we have no blood ties to this family name.

My father's mother had several sons, by a few different fathers. My father was begat by a man whose last name was Grudzeicki; he was Polish, and also of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, which is where we trace our Jewish ancestry (but not heritage, as Jewishness is conveyed matrilineally). But my father's mother married another man sometime after my father was born, a man whose last name was Barnes, and Barnes adopted my father and some of his other brothers, but not all of them. Consequently, I have uncles who are Barnes's, and other uncles who are Grudzeicki's.

So by blood, I am a Grudzecki. But I have never felt a huge tie to that name, and unfortunately most of the relatives I have known who were Grudzeicki's were not nice people, so I didn't want a tie to them. Also... again, we have the problem of names that are impossible to spell and pronounce (outside of Poland I guess).

Eventually I re-forged my relationship with my nuclear family, and I decided that I did, indeed, wish to bear the same name as and be associated with them.

A funny side note - supposedly "Grudzeicki" means "a fortification or castle on a hill." So when my father got adopted, we downgraded - from a castle to a barn! But once again, this reminds us to be humble.

We once again revisit my mid-teens, around the same time I was considering the name Aaron. As I mentioned, I had a curious preoccupation with prophets and prophecy at the time.

I had also recently begun engaging in a new hobby. I joined a group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. An "anachronism" if you don't know, is something which occurs out of place in time. For example, dressing up in medieval garb in 2023 is "anachronistic." But that is what we did, as well as a number of odd activities. In a way our activities resembled LARP - Live Action Roleplay - but most folks would take exception to that because of the (supposed) heavy emphasis on historical accuracy and academic research. In this respect we kind of resemble Historical Re-enactment, except that we do not (are not allowed to) impersonate real historical figures. Your "persona" must be historically accurate, but not be an actual person from history.

For various complex reasons beyond the scope of this page, I eventually decided that my persona would be a Bard from Cornwall, specifically from around Lannstefan. I decided that I lived during the end of the reign of Edward I, in the late 13th and early 14th century.

From my early persona Bio:

Seeing as life expectancy wasn't any higher than 30 in those days I would have died around the mid 1320's, which puts me just a little ahead of the horrors of the Black Death, but also spares me the company of the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer and Dafydd ap Gwilym, which is sad. I would have lived in the times of William Wallace and just after the end of the Crusades, so there would be MUCH to tell about, but Bards of the Welsh tradition would have been persecuted under the reign of Edward I and so I would have to be a clever about my main occupation! 

I don't know exactly when or how I decided on the name "Quill" but when it came to me it seemed such a perfect name for a Bard, and it just felt so right! If by some chance you are unaware, a quill - or quill pen - is a writing utensil, often depicted as a big billowy feather with a fancy nib (both of which are just inaccurate, a real quill would have been stripped of its decorative barbs - impractical for writing with - and the end would have been made of the shaft itself, cut to shape, not affixed with a metal nib until much more modern times).

I often claim that "Quill" is a shortened (and obviously "Anglicised") version of Cuillioc, but the truth is Quill came first.

It wasn't until I started studying the Cornish language that I discovered the word "cuillioc." [IPA Pronunciation: kʰw̥ɨɬʎɒk] This is where my interest in prophecy come to the fore; supposedly "cuillioc" is an early Cornish word that roughly translates as "soothsayer" although it would more accurately be translated as "truth speaker." 'Cuill' comes from an Insular celtic word 'coll' which refers to a hazel tree, but also periphrastically refers to "wisdom" or "truth" as this is what the hazel tree tends to represent in Celtic wisdom and mythology. (The hazel tree, incidentally, has always been an important symbol to me, even long before I began to explore both names and spirituality.)

The suffix -ioc is related to the Welsh -iog, "an adjectival suffix often indicating an abundance of the root." [For example "‎gair" (“word”) + ‎-iog becomes "‎geiriog" (“wordy”)]. In Cornish names it tends to indicate that the person is a source or medium of the root. Thus "cuillioc" would be "the source of an abundance of wisdom/truth."

As I was at the very beginning of my journey as a spiritual seeker and public speaker, I felt it important, and fitting, to take a name that reminded me of the importance of speaking Truth - spiritual truth and truth derived from wisdom, including personal truth.

Hopefully the "speaker of truth" Cuillioc becomes a "writer of truth" when transforming into Quill.