My Name

Image credit: Bestowing the Buddhist Name “Fumyō,” Ichidon Shōzui

My name, according to baby name websites, means “brown-haired chieftain”. According to me, it means so much more. It means adventuring with friends in the Pacific Northwest. It means Saturday movie night with over-flowing buttered popcorn. It means making my family laugh with corny dad jokes I find online. It means being the last kid picked for 3rd grade kickball and spending the rest of the year hiding out in the library. It means being the only person to stay calm through the rough patches. It means the cool, crisp ocean air in the early morning. It means a single star in the dead of night. It means me. 

My name is of Irish descent. My grandpa is Irish, my mom is half Irish, and I am a quarter Irish. I like the way this connects me to my family, my ancestry. My name derives from the Irish name Donnabháin. A lot of letters for sure, and complicated just like me. But beyond that similarity, and all the n’s and o’s, there’s another story. The real truth of how I came to be Donovan.

I was named after Donavon Frankenreiter, a famous folk musician. My parents weren’t die-hard fans or anything, but they saw his name on a billboard on the side of the freeway, and thought, “hey, that’s a cool name.” And that was that. They changed up the spelling and boom, I was Donovan. Like him, I have the drive to make people happy and listen to me. 

You would think everyone would just call me Donovan, and it would just be that. But I have developed different versions of my name from each of my friends. Donny Ray, Donny, D-Van and Dono are just the tip of the iceberg. All of these variations are developed through how they see me. Each name is a personality that I have developed through the people I have met.

But my name is just a title. A title for a specific person. A title with millions and millions of memories behind it. There could be a thousand Donovans in the world, but there is only one me to make the most of it. My name is the anchor for a boat. My name is the battery for a computer. My name is the lighter for a candle. Without it, nothing else works. 

My name keeps me where I am. It grounds me, like a stake for a tent. It keeps me where I am, who I am, and who I want to be. Yet even after digging up all this information, my name is just, well, a name. But it’s not just any name. It’s my name