27 pages • 54-minute read
Names/Nombres
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of anti-immigrant bias and racism.
The Connection Between Language and Identity
“Names/Nombres” explores the relationship between language and identity, examining how identity can shift upon entering a new linguistic environment. The essay suggests that language is more than just a tool for communication; it is deeply connected to personal identity, cultural belonging, and family history.
Throughout the text, names and pronunciation illustrate the deeply personal nature of language. When the young Alvarez first returns to the United States, she arrives with a name containing an “orchestra of sound” that English speakers quickly butcher in myriad ways (Paragraph 1). Alvarez is named after her mother, and her full name follows the Dominican tradition of including four generations worth of her parents’ surnames, indicating how her name connects her to her family, culture, and history. However, in the United States, Alvarez’s Spanish name becomes a site not of connection but one of difference. Her name marks her as different from her classmates, as do other aspects of her linguistic identity, like her accent.
By the time Alvarez reaches high school, she has lost her desire to be known by her “correct Dominican name” and has embraced the many nicknames her friends have christened her with. Her popularity “show[s] in [her] name” (Paragraph 5), as different friend groups develop different nicknames for her that signal her in-group status. One group of “troublemakers,” for example, calls Alvarez “Alcatraz.” Her multitude of “new names” indicates Alvarez’s new sense of belonging but also her increasing alienation from her family and her culture as she makes room for her “American” identity to flourish. At home, she is still “Hoo-lee-tah,” but outside, she is “Jules,” “Jude,” or “Judy,” illustrating her increasingly divided sense of identity.
From an early age, Alvarez is an avid reader and aspiring writer, and this ultimately provides her with the tools she needs to forge a uniquely Dominican American identity for herself. She is sensitive to how language serves as a tool for parsing, understanding, and articulating complex identities; she begins to understand how different names lead people to see her in different ways, grant her access to different social circles, and allow her to access different facets of her identity. As her family insists she will one day become a “well-known” writer, Alvarez “wonder[s] which [name] [she] [will] go by” (Paragraph 32), which implies that language is a way for Alvarez to take ownership of her narrative and explore her identity on her own terms.
The Desire to Assimilate Versus Staying Connected to One’s Culture
“Names/Nombres” is a story about the young Julia Alvarez’s conflict between trying to assimilate into mainstream American culture and staying connected to her Dominican identity. While she longs to fit in with her friends at school, there are parts of her Dominican heritage that are impossible to erase. Instead of choosing to be Dominican or American, Alvarez must learn to reconcile and embrace both sides of her identity.
When she first arrives in the United States, Alvarez is proud of her Dominican heritage. In the face of the customs officer’s mispronunciation of her last name, she speaks it to herself, reaffirming her identity with “the organ blast of a” and “the drumroll of the r” (Paragraph 1)—metaphors and imagery that evoke triumphant resistance in the face of erasure. However, as she grows up, Alvarez longs to blend in and “merge with the Sallys and the Janes in [her] class” (Paragraph 16). Much of this shift continues to play out through contested language, but it manifests in other ways as well. For instance, Alvarez struggles with the knowledge that her complexion is darker than her friends’ and blushes “with shame” when her classmates treat her like “a rare, exotic friend” (Paragraph 24). Alvarez isn’t the only one in her family who is eager to let go of their Dominican identity to better fit in with American society. Her mother considers changing her eldest daughter’s name after she is born to avoid the “embarrassment” of the Spanish name.
Try as she might, however, complete assimilation is impossible for Alvarez because her Dominican identity cannot be entirely hidden. Her accent and appearance give away her “foreignness,” and her classmates eagerly ask where she is from “originally.” Her large, conspicuous extended family also contrasts with her classmates’ nuclear families, and Alvarez finds introducing her relations to her friends to be “a further trial” (Paragraph 28). However, Alvarez notes that having a large family also has many “pluses,” such as the many gifts she receives at her graduation party. Her family’s size and gregariousness, with their “complicated names” and “convoluted” relationships, is definitive evidence of Alvarez’s Dominican roots but also a source of joy and comfort, indicating all she stands to lose by abandoning her heritage. Alvarez closes the essay by wondering which of her many names she might go by when she becomes a famous writer, suggesting that she is beginning to understand the multifaceted, intersectional nature of her identity and take ownership over it.
The Power Dynamics of Pronunciation
“Names/Nombres” is an essay about the power dynamics at play in accent and pronunciation. Upon moving to the United States, Alvarez’s name is pronounced in myriad ways, both correctly and incorrectly, but never according to her inclination, illustrating the dominant, English-speaking culture’s power over Alvarez and her identity.
From the moment Alvarez arrives in the United States, her lack of power is evident in the way her family’s name is mispronounced. The immigration officer calls her father “Mister Elbures,” and Alvarez is afraid to correct him, worried they “[won’t] be let in” if she challenges him (Paragraph 1). The carelessness with which the dominant culture pronounces Alvarez’s name, ranging from “Alburest” to “Alberase,” indicates a lack of respect and an erasure of her Dominican identity, yet Alvarez’s fear in her encounter with the customs officer foreshadows the terms of her acceptance in America—acceptance that is conditioned on compliance with the dominant culture. For instance, Alvarez and her sisters’ ability to assimilate (or not) into American society hinges partly on how easily their names can be Anglicized. Alvarez’s older sister, Mauricia, struggles with her “rich, noisy name” (Paragraph 7), while her younger sister, Ana, assimilates effortlessly.
Eventually, the repeated mispronunciations and simplifications of her name cause Alvarez to lose her desire to be known by her Spanish name. Longing to fit in at school, Alvarez begins favoring English nicknames that connote belonging among her classmates even as they separate her from her Dominican culture, identity, and family. Alvarez herself begins to pronounce her and her sisters’ names “the American way” (Paragraph 14), so she is surprised to find English speakers correcting her in the 1960s, during “a push to pronounce Third World names correctly” (Paragraph 13). Ana’s roommate, for example, informs Alvarez that her sister’s name is pronounced “Ah-nah.” While this does reflect the original Spanish pronunciation, the shift in pronunciation coincides with shifting norms and preoccupations in mainstream American culture. In a microcosm of the way Anglo American society dictates their broader public identities, there is no regard for how Alvarez and her family self-identify, nor how they prefer their names to be pronounced. However, through writing, Alvarez can manipulate language in her favor, using phonetic spellings to dictate the terms of how readers encounter her name.
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