Izear: The name that doesn’t exist

Izear, well it’s supposed to be Itziar, umm not sure myself but my mom choose my name before I was even born. She was In Mexico, and some people from Spain went and visited there since where my mom is from is well known for its coffee cultivation. One of the girl’s name was Itziar, so she heard it, she liked it and she decided it she was going to name her daughter that when she had one. Years later she had me *tada* surprisingly enough she still remember that promised that she made to her self and named me that, however, there was one tiny little problem…she didn’t know how to spell it. So she did the best that she could and spelled my name I-Z-E-A-R. So if you were wondering why is my name so unique, well that’s the reason, is really not that deep, she just didn’t know how to spell my name. Now the meaning of my original” name is something like a goddess, it originated in Spain and I actually meet a person that had the original name, funny story actually, but I’ll get to that later.

Names are supposed to be part of our identities, but what happens when people often mispronounced, misspell your name, or they simply pronounce it the Spanish way or the English way?. In my case is like building different personalities, because when people called me by my name in Spanish is mostly family, so intent to reply more politely , I mean, just when you speak another language your tone changes, so that’s another factor. Yes, I obviously use English more than Spanish and yes I obviously use a polite tone but umm… it’s really hard to describe, but is just not the same, since my friends, coworkers, classmates, technically almost everyone uses/ knows me by the English pronunciation, so I identify with that more, I just feel weird whenever someone calls me or uses the Spanish pronunciation. Actually now that I think about it, not even my family uses the Spanish way, at least barely. The mostly called me by my middle name. 

Ok now let me tell you about the story I was talking about. So one day I was hanging out with my friend and we enter this really cool jewelry store, it was pink and very small, filled with very pretty jewelry and clothes but also very expensive we were looking at the rings and I decided to buy one, it was a white and wiggly (about the price… umm don’t ask me about the price, I tried to forget that detail.) As I approach the cashier the asked me for my email so I gave them my email, then she stopped and asked me, “Is Izear your name?” And I replied “yeah”, she proceeded to say “omg my name is Itziar” we stared laughing and I replied “Omg that was the name I was supposed to have, my mom just misspell it”, she said “I rarely find people with the same name/close to it, my name came from Spain, I’m from Spain.”and I replied, “yep that’s exactly were my name was supposed to come from.” As we said our goodbyes I kinda left happy because you can easily find people having the same names as you (for most of the people), and that’s why I also stared to like my name more. Now that I’m here let me give you a quick “the meaning of my name” moment. According to google Itziar means; “Spanish origin and the meaning of Itziar is ‘ancient stone’. The name derives its meaning from the name of a village in Basque that is known for having the shrine to the Virgin Mary, and hence the name Itziar means ‘old stone’.” But I guess technically my name doesn’t mean that, I think it technically means nothing, its a made up word/name.

The idea of always having a unique name and people mispronouncing and even to the point of making fun of it, and for the longest I used to tell my mom how much I hated my name, she always used to tell me, “If you hated it that badly, once you get older change your name.” I honestly at that point I hurt my mom’s feelings and she was honestly tired of me saying that like almost all the time someone called me by my name. People tell me how unique/pretty my name is and they like that, I mean let’s take my sister as an example, her name is Mia, which is a common name, and she tells me how she hates the fact that is so common, that’s makes me feel good about having a unique name. When going to Starbucks or any place that requires your name to be spelled or called out, I used to always give my sisters name, but now that I learned to love my name, I give it out, yes, there’s time where they mispronounced it or misspelled it, instead of feeling embarrassed I laugh with my sister, because each person always says it in a different way, and not going to lie seeing them struggle to pronounce or spell my name is kinda funny. There’s times where they call me but since they aren’t pronouncing it correctly I just stand there, until someone approaches me and ask me for my name and there just like “omg! I’m so sorry, this is yours.”. Those little things makes me love my name even more.

I learned to love my name, I use to hate my name being so unique but every time I learned more and more to love my name, is also a step to loving and accepting myself. Is like I mentioned before, some people can find people with the same name, but my name is just for me, it belongs to none but me. And I think that’s the beautiful think about unique names, sure we won’t easily find our name being on a keychain in a gift store or a coke can, but our names belongs to us, and maybe a couple of people.