Yes, that's my real name

“Is that like Tinkerbell?” the lady on the phone giggles.

Ever since I was a kid, my last name has been an albatross around my neck. It’s hefty, unusual, and a humbling reminder of where I come from.

Once in kindergarten, the teacher was teaching us to spell our last names. She came around to our desks with pieces of paper. She set one down in front of the kid next to me. It said “Smith.” Five letters, piece of cake.

Then, she dropped a sheet in front of me. Lo and behold, there was mine in all its glory: “Tinkelenberg.”

The other kid laughed.

To this day, people are taken aback. Over the years, I’ve heard everyone from football coaches to camp counselors come up with the same goofy approximations while all still thinking they’re original. I have heard it all.

To this day, no one is ever able to spell the thing. People send me emails that don’t arrive. I call a business and they ask what my name is, I just start spelling:

“T-I-N as in Nancy, K-E-L as in llama, E-N as in Nancy, B as in boy, E-R-G.”

The off-kilter nature has its perks, though. People comment on it all the time. I got elected class president in high school because my classmates, even ones I hadn’t met, thought my name was funny. It took me a long time to appreciate that X factor and what a gift that was.

I didn’t always have a sense of humor. I got picked on a lot as a kid, and I needed an outlet. As a writer, I fell in love with pen names.

Pseudonyms are magic, or so it seems. The idea that you can take on a moniker and unlock some creativity appealed to me. I looked up to Mark Twain and O. Henry and played around with several: Xavier Xander, Reuben Sinclair, Bubba Shakespeare.

An alter ego was like a superhero costume or invisibility cloak. You could be anyone and do and say anything. When I was a teenager, I wrote letters to the editor of newspapers with wild and crazy takes under fake names. I didn’t know any better and neither did the editors. They printed the letters none the wiser.

When I grew up, I continued this exploration. I circulated a few short stories with a pen name, and I made music under a band name. I felt I needed to separate creative output from who I was.

It always worked at the beginning. Obscurity is comforting for a while, and then it’s stifling. No one knew me and I was free from negativity, but I wasn’t happy because I was disconnected from others.

The writing slowed to a trickle. Each foray with a pen name devolved into becoming another persona I couldn’t live up to and trying to be someone I’m not. Sanity won out in the end.

That’s when I learned that a name doesn’t matter that much. It’s just a shorthand for your reputation, and that comes through action. If you want to amount to anything, you have to breathe life into it and stand behind it. A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for, as the saying goes.

Something else happened. I had a kid. Amidst the pandemonium, I had some self-reflection. I circled back to the name I was born with.

Up to now, I had been the only boy in my immediate family. I thought of myself as the last of the Tinkelenbergs, the last of my kind. I couldn’t claim that distinction anymore. Like it or not, I needed to prove this name is worth having and wearing with pride. It was time to own it.

Today, I’m building a permanent home on the internet and simplifying my life. I’ve made peace with the possibility that I might end up just writing for a few people I know and that’s it. I might as well make it easy for them.

The more I’ve thought through it, the more ready I am. Even if people can’t spell my name, they don’t soon forget it. There aren’t many Tinkelenbergs on the shelf, and very few people own the .com domain for their surname.

It may not make for a sexy brand, but—this part is important—I no longer care. I don’t identify with any of this. I’m convinced that focusing too much on your identity is a great way to go in circles.

And I don’t think there’s much of a choice anymore anyway. We are headed for a whirlpool of AI slop. Soon, you won’t know if the person you’re talking to on the internet is real or a robot. For those who care about what’s human, authenticity will be our only defense. It’s the one thing ChatGPT can’t generate, and no robot trained on a bell curve would choose this name.

A name is just a name, whether you choose it or not. What it says is much less important than what it stands for.

So here I am, the real me from now on. Yes, my name is weird. It’s human and so am I.

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