What's in a name?
Jane asked me a question in an email tonight that I meant to blog the answer to ages ago...
"How did you come up with Enverite as a surname?"
It was basically a combination of pretentiousness, honesty and stupidity. I'd not really considered Becky having a last name, to be honest for many years Becky didn't even have a first name. But when I came to be active online, I seemed to need one. I could just have used my male surname as some t-girls do, but it seemed A) Not Very Girly and B) a bit too identifiable (there aren't that many people about with my surname).
It was at a time when I was deciding to be a bit more honest about the tranny side of me (despite the fact I was in the process of lying about my name), and I'd always liked the French word for truth, vérité, as in Cinema Vérité and so on. I also liked the idea (at the time) of having a surname that was unique and exotic.
"DeVérité" (of the truth) didn't sound quite right, but "EnVérité" (in truth) sounded better. I particularly remembered a passage that Gandhi wrote:
Almost immediately I started using it I started to think I should change it. Nobody knows how to pronounce it (it's "on-veh-writ-tay"), and nobody knows how to do the little acutes on the Es (on a PC - hold down CTRL and ALT and press E).
But then it was a bit too late to change it, so it stuck!
I kinda like it now, there's not many EnVérités out there (a Google search on the word turns up almost just me!) and if nothing else it's always a good conversation piece explaining how it came about!
"How did you come up with Enverite as a surname?"
It was basically a combination of pretentiousness, honesty and stupidity. I'd not really considered Becky having a last name, to be honest for many years Becky didn't even have a first name. But when I came to be active online, I seemed to need one. I could just have used my male surname as some t-girls do, but it seemed A) Not Very Girly and B) a bit too identifiable (there aren't that many people about with my surname).
It was at a time when I was deciding to be a bit more honest about the tranny side of me (despite the fact I was in the process of lying about my name), and I'd always liked the French word for truth, vérité, as in Cinema Vérité and so on. I also liked the idea (at the time) of having a surname that was unique and exotic.
"DeVérité" (of the truth) didn't sound quite right, but "EnVérité" (in truth) sounded better. I particularly remembered a passage that Gandhi wrote:
"I see and find Beauty in Truth or through Truth. All Truths, not merely true ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures or songs are highly beautiful. People generally fail to see Beauty in Truth, the ordinary man runs away from it and becomes blind to the beauty in it. Whenever men begin to see Beauty in Truth, then true Art will arise."So in a way, being true to myself would reveal a beauty I'd tried to hide. (I told you this would be a bit pretentious!)
Almost immediately I started using it I started to think I should change it. Nobody knows how to pronounce it (it's "on-veh-writ-tay"), and nobody knows how to do the little acutes on the Es (on a PC - hold down CTRL and ALT and press E).
But then it was a bit too late to change it, so it stuck!
I kinda like it now, there's not many EnVérités out there (a Google search on the word turns up almost just me!) and if nothing else it's always a good conversation piece explaining how it came about!
i had the same dilema with mine, wanted to use the latin ( i beleive ) word for darkness "tenebrae" as Hanna Tenebrae sounded cool enough
but apparently there is already-somewhere- out there in Tgirl land a Hanna(h) Tenebrae so that was that!
Violane is simply a song by the Cocteau Twins and i liked the word!
Hanna x
i guess i thought "tenebrae" represented the darker side of my character in 'hanna'?? like hanna being in shadow or some such thing!
and you thought Enverite was pretentious!
Hanna x
Only kidding, now if I can just work our how to do the french accents on a laptop?
Wilson is the usual, local mispronunciation of my birth surname.
Ah.. didn't know you were named after a cinema. Good idea...
Hugs
Joanna Odéon-Maidstoné.
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