Our theme for the month of June is “confessions.”
There is a beautiful poem by Assétou Xango titled, “Give Your Daughters Difficult Names,” inspired by the following quote from Warsan Shire: “Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
That was not something my parents thought about when choosing the name Carlisle: I was named after my grandmother—her middle name was Carlyle after her great great great grandmother’s maiden name. Jane Carlyle was the mother of Sarah Ann Carlyle, who lived in the mid-1800s. She was the grandmother of Sarah Emma Pridmore, the mother of Jane Carlyle Land, who was my grandmother.
I feel like I see the name “Carlisle” everywhere. It’s the name of towns in the middle of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ontario. It’s the logo on the bottom of the red Coca Cola plastic cup at my favorite Mexican restaurant. It’s the hot dad from Twilight. It isn’t an uncommon or extremely unique name, when you’re on the lookout for it.
My parents changed the spelling of my name from Carlyle to Carlisle to avoid anyone nicknaming me Carly—I’m so not a Carly. But that opened the door to even more nicknames: Car, Carl, Kyle, Carlizzle, Clizzle, C Liz, Liz, Clip, Big Toe (unrelated). The list goes on. I didn’t mind having nicknames, but they did make it stand out every time someone took the time to articulate my full name, especially correctly. The boy I had a crush on in high school wouldn’t just say “hi” to me in the hallway—he’d say, “Hi Carlisle,” and that meant everything to me.
I relished when a substitute teacher would do roll call and I’d prepare to say, “It’s pronounced ‘Carlisle’,” before they even got to the pause they’d inevitably do before getting to my name.
When I was in elementary school—around when The Princess and the Pauper (the Barbie film) came out—I started to feel insecure about how unique my name was. It was eight letters long, had a silent S, and didn’t have any special meaning beyond “isle of car” whatever that means. My dad, in his infinite wisdom and kindness, sought out businesses with the name Carlisle in them. He emailed them, explaining my predicament: he’d saddled me with a difficult name and wanted to rectify the situation by showing me other people shared my name and would they be willing to send some (free) merch my way?
I got a few pens and a tote bag from the Carlisle Plastics company, a notepad from Carlisle Jewelry, and a t-shirt from Carlisle Logging and Company.
Recently I was consulted by a soon-to-be first time father who plans to name his future child a “unique name.” He wanted to know what it was like growing up with a name that likely got mispronounced, misspelled, mis-nicknamed, misgendered even.
Although it was mispronounced, misspelled, etc. I would never give away my name for any other. I have friends who go by their middle names, who wonder if they would’ve turned out differently if they’d been named something else. My future mother-in-law tells the story of looking at my fiancé as a baby and saying, “he should’ve been named Caleb!” But my name is who I am. My name is Carlisle. It’s pronounced car–lie–uhl.
My senior quote printed in my high school yearbook is “It’s pronounced Carlisle,” a hilarious bit in both foresight and hindsight. And yet at my college graduation they mispronounced it. Car–lee–uhl. A new one—nice!
Carlisle Patete (‘22) came to Calvin University from the mountains of North Carolina and graduated with a double major in film & media and creative writing. After brief stints in Los Angeles and Chicago, she now resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she enjoys sweet tea on her front porch and identifying every tree and bird she runs into on any hiking trail.
