Names/Nombres

Throughout the text, names symbolize identity, belonging, and familial and cultural history. As names become the primary site of both belonging and exclusion when Alvarez and her family arrive in the United States, they are intimately tied to all three of the essay’s major themes. From the moment they arrive, English mispronunciations like “Elbures” and “Alburest” reveal both the dominant culture’s ignorance of their cultural identity and its ability to redefine that identity, developing the theme of The Power Dynamics of Pronunciation. Alvarez is named after her mother, and her name includes four generations’ worth of maternal and paternal surnames. Therefore, mispronunciations and simplifications of her name are not just careless mistakes; they represent an active erasure of her history and identity. 

As Alvarez adjusts to the United States and makes friends, her new nicknames, like Jude, Jules, and Alcatraz, represent the development of her American identity and the new sense of belonging she finds among her classmates. These nicknames slowly supersede her given names in personal importance, revealing her struggle with The Desire to Assimilate Versus Staying Connected to One’s Roots. It is only in the essay’s final lines that she concludes the dichotomy is a false one: She does not have to choose between her many names because she can be both Dominican and American.