My last day as a Community HealthCorps member at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center was yesterday. One of the things I will miss most about my time there is being around people from other countries (mostly El Salvador, Colombia, Morocco, Ecuador, Somalia, Italy, Vietnam, and Brazil).
In the beginning of the year my coworker and I started to keep a list of the particularly striking names of patients. Here are some of them:
Female
Maroine
Rahmirah
Luz
Yoyibeth
Marilia
Khadija
Sanaa
Maribel
Ayala
Raquel
Maaria
Myriam
Naira
Rosangela
Cesibela
Naima
Pilar
Elarai
Laila
Isabella
Abia
Amalia
Hanaki
Male
Hicham
Hafid
Either
Hala
Davi
I do not feel any particular affection for my name beyond the facts that my mother gave it to me and that I have been called this ever since I was a baby (with a few variations here and there!). Maybe it doesn't seem special to me because my first name is fairly common among my peers. The foreign names above, however, sound beautiful to me; I wonder if the name bearers feel the same, or if they too wish that they had a more unique, and perhaps meaningful, name. I know that in the U.S. it is common for people to introduce themselves with a nickname, or even to go so far as changing their legal names, when they reach a certain age. I wonder if this is a mostly American tendency, or if people in other countries try to reinvent themselves too.
After a few months time working at the health center, my colleague and I stopped adding to the list of names. I'm not sure why, but maybe we stopped because we had become accustomed to hearing exotic names, and the electricity we had once felt by being in the presence of so many different cultures had worn down. Now, however, just a day after leaving the health center and its diversity, I am already feeling a bit sheltered in my urban professional neighborhood.
In the beginning of the year my coworker and I started to keep a list of the particularly striking names of patients. Here are some of them:
Female
Maroine
Rahmirah
Luz
Yoyibeth
Marilia
Khadija
Sanaa
Maribel
Ayala
Raquel
Maaria
Myriam
Naira
Rosangela
Cesibela
Naima
Pilar
Elarai
Laila
Isabella
Abia
Amalia
Hanaki
Male
Hicham
Hafid
Either
Hala
Davi
* * *
I do not feel any particular affection for my name beyond the facts that my mother gave it to me and that I have been called this ever since I was a baby (with a few variations here and there!). Maybe it doesn't seem special to me because my first name is fairly common among my peers. The foreign names above, however, sound beautiful to me; I wonder if the name bearers feel the same, or if they too wish that they had a more unique, and perhaps meaningful, name. I know that in the U.S. it is common for people to introduce themselves with a nickname, or even to go so far as changing their legal names, when they reach a certain age. I wonder if this is a mostly American tendency, or if people in other countries try to reinvent themselves too.
After a few months time working at the health center, my colleague and I stopped adding to the list of names. I'm not sure why, but maybe we stopped because we had become accustomed to hearing exotic names, and the electricity we had once felt by being in the presence of so many different cultures had worn down. Now, however, just a day after leaving the health center and its diversity, I am already feeling a bit sheltered in my urban professional neighborhood.
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