What does my name say about me? It depends on which one you choose.

Baby names carry history and potential. How my relationship to my name (Catherine or Cathy?) has changed.

My first grandchild will arrive any day now. I recognized my son's large bony foot in the black and white sonogram image, but that's all we know. The sex will be a surprise. The parents-to-be are also—wisely, I think—keeping prospective names close to the vest.

We'll meet this new being when they present themselves to the world with no preconceived notions or unconscious biases about what their parent's chosen name may project.

A Brenda will steal your boyfriend! Laurens can't be trusted! Bruno? "We don't talk about Bruno."

Do you prefer Cathy or Catherine?

I use Catherine for my bylines, business cards, and professional email. Then (except within my writing community), I'll introduce myself as Cathy in person. Confusion ensues.

Sometimes, I lie. "My dad calls me Catherine, and my mom calls me Cathy." I need to provide a backstory, a rationale for my ambivalence—my lack of commitment to one persona or another.

I usually let someone else choose, not because I don't care, but because I can't decide at that moment of our first meeting. Who am I to you? That remains to be seen.

Catherine is intelligent and reserved. Cathy is more fun (and a little bit slutty).

"Either is fine." I'll say, leaving the decision up to the asker—giving away the power to define myself. For what is a name but an identity?

Have you Googled your name?

I searched online for my human homonyms and compiled these persona profiles, which, I think, prove my dual identity hypothesis.

Catherine Palmer is a Professor of Communication Science. She's a Christian romance novelist, a registered dietician, a licensed counselor, and a relationship expert. She's an art director, a popular storyteller on The Moth, and a lawyer advising clients on white-collar criminal investigations.  

Cathy Palmer is a pathologist and a native Iowan who states she "needs" to paint. She is a teacher, a real estate agent, and a leadership coach. She is an actress whose credits include Horny Housewives 8.

Or, take Kate, Princess of Wales, who prefers to use her given name, Catherine.

Catherine is a got-her-shit-together, serious woman. Kate likes to have a good time.

The U.S. media popularized Kate because the nickname makes her more relatable, down-to-earth, and approachable—as if Catherine could be none of those things.

Why names matter

Several studies correlate one's name to success later in life. Many results were debunked; others are worth further exploration, but who cares about the data?

Our names, like our problems, matter because they are ours. A name can carry history or baggage, expectations or promise—or all of the above.

Cathy is the name of my childhood. She loves the color purple and David Cassidy. Young Cathy carries a pillow named Softie and sucks her thumb until she is nearly 12. She has an endless imagination but is rather lazy about making things happen.

If you're a late Boomer or elder Gen X, Cathy is cliché. There were three Cathys on my high school field hockey team, and now I'm surrounded by four more Kathys (spelled with K's, but they're still cool) in my friend group.

The name Cathy peaked in popularity in the 1960s, perhaps thanks to a talking doll.

Chatty Cathy was a dead-eyed blonde in a lace petticoat and blue pinafore. Pull her string, and she would say things like:

Please take me with you

I love you

Let's play house

The kind of talk that held this Cathy back in her 20s and 30s.

Catherine, on the other hand, is like the protagonist in the song Short Skirt, Long Jacket by the band Cake.

"She's changing her name from Kitty to Karen. She's trading her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron," John McCrea, the lead vocalist, sings in a blithe monotone about a woman whose "fingernails shine like justice."

"Catherine," said the greeting on my voicemail and the wood-grained name plaque on my office wall. Catherine is "touring the facilities and taking up slack."

Catherine gets shit done.

Since I opened my first checking account freshman year at college, every document I've signed, every social media profile, every byline, and tax form reads Catherine Palmer. Standing at the marble counter and using a javelin-shaped pen to squeeze my loopy signature on a too-short line was the earliest expression of the woman I aspired to be.

Call me by my name

Flash forward four decades when I started playing pickleball. I tapped paddles with other new players across the net and said, "Hi, I'm Cathy." Later in the afternoon, everyone in my writing group called me Catherine, as they've come to know me.

My mother writes Cathy Palmer on the checks she sends me for Amazon orders I place on her behalf. Felix calls me Cathy, as do my oldest and best friends. Some try out Catherine, then wrinkle their noses. "Nope, can't," they say.

When I met my newest, dear-hearted friends at an MFA program at age 57, I introduced my aspirational self. These women met me as Catherine and shook their heads in disbelief when I told them I'm mostly called Cathy. "Nope. Doesn't fit," they say. 

Is Cathy more my name if it's what the people who've loved me longest and most choose to call me? Do I use Catherine as a shield to keep everyone else at a distance? Yes and no, and also no—or maybe?

In the corporate world, I lacked the ambition to differentiate. I'd answer to Catherine or Cathy, sometimes shortened to Cath, and often shouts of "Palmer!"

As a writer, I am Catherine. Full stop. I need the wholeness of my given name. Perhaps I need the distance, too, but it's more than that. It's that first bank account—the full expression of the woman I will forever be discovering.

Catherine is an intrepid explorer. She will search for meaning while Cathy cracks a beer. I need them both.

Two things can be true

My daughter-in-law groans over pizza on a warm spring evening as that bony baby foot stretches under a rib. My son asks. "What do you want the baby to call you? Grammy, or something else?"

"Whatever the baby decides," I say, pulling a pen from my purse to sign the dinner check.

My signature is big and loose now, with a large forward-leaning first initial C and the P of my last name reaching back to embrace most of my first. The letters in between merge together—indivisible.

Do you have a nickname? A sobriquet? A nom de plume? What does your name mean to you? Has the meaning changed over time? Join the conversation.

Have your feelings about our name changed as you’ve changed?