I wept when I got married. Society expected me to take my husband’s name, and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t fight it. My past twenty-five years were wrapped up in a neat little box to be buried in the backyard behind the apartment. It was supposed to be fine.
When it finally happened, I launched into a multi-week grieving process. Nobody understood my crisis. Even when I choked “I’ve worked so hard to become this person. I am mourning. A part of me has died, and nobody talks about this,” I was met with blank stares.
It’ll be easier to let go, they said. You can start your business under your married name. Look, there are several others with your full name making headlines. This is fine. This is GOOD.
Does what we call ourselves, or what others call us, actively guide our future?
According to my parents, my name was arbitrarily chosen. Danielle sounded nice, marginally nicer than contenders Nicole or Britney. Renée was one of six generic middle names the eighties could offer. I often wished for Kimberly or Heather growing up. Something soft. Something kind.
Even as a kid, Danielle felt harsh. The onomatopoeia produced by screaming “Dan-YELL!!!” stoked the fear of god in me. My name felt like someone looking ominously over my shoulder. I was destined to be good or some omniscient force would rain righteous anger upon me.
One year my grandmother delivered an Easter basket bursting with pastel purple grass and white chocolate crosses. Among the delicate sweets was a lilac card with my name on it. I flipped it over.
“Danielle. Origin: Hebrew. God Has Judged” written in swirly purple script.
Fuck.
I flipped it back again. —And found what?! What did he find?!
Fuuuck.
An ellipsis hung invisible and heavy on the end of the card.
Jacob wrestled God for his name in the Torah. He grappled an entire evening with an angel and came forth with a new name. We accept this, of course. Look at all that followed. A genesis of a nation. We gloss over parts of the story, the supplanting, circumventing, overreaching. The wars within the family walls.
Since I was small, friends, parents, and teachers would tell me I was powerful. What does a tiny person who feels so disempowered do with that? Kids perceive things more clearly than adults but don’t often have the language to match their awareness. This knowing translated as You have a strong personality.
But I want to be cute and sweet, I’d say. Girls are soft and sweet! I don’t know what that means! Tell me what that means!
As Facebook spread to college campuses, a bevy of anonymous ranking systems followed. I remember logging in late one night, hoping I could live with the results.
Powerful
My stomach sank.
By the time I hit college French, I felt a reprieve. Danielle Renée sounds wonderfully French, elegant, and as I learned later, like a stuffy old duchess. I was learning to enjoy the sound of it in my mouth.
My teacher took a teaching moment and spoke a prophecy over me.
“Ahhhh Renée, you know what it means? Re- as in again, -née like the passé composé of naissance, to be born. You are reborn in the middle.”
Trauma is a story that starts in the middle and works its way back to the beginning, where the story ends. We were steps from the beginning, but the interim was on my birth certificate.
How did she know I would be reborn in the middle? It hadn’t happened yet.
I honestly didn’t stand a chance. In my cuffed ankle socks I mountaineered over the imposing school bus steps bound for kindergarten for the first time.
“Hi Mister Bus Driver,” I greeted him.
The bus driver, Mr. Isaac, an untrustworthy man with two first names, thumped the clipboard and smirked.
“Hi… Danielle Duncan Donuts.”
The bus burst into laughter.
From that moment on, I would always be Duncan Donuts or Double-D (a moniker I thankfully never embodied), but I loved the tight alliteration. I based my studio name on the four syllable count I’d heard my entire life.
For years Evans was good to me, appropriately so, as Evans means “God is good, gracious” but it felt like that grace had worn off. I was coasting on fumes after my divorce. The grace was a shield, and the shield was cracked.
I tried to be positive, “I magpied this name, I will make something great of it,” which was immediately met with obstacles. An America’s Next Top Model winner, an SEO-savvy author gaining traction, and a changing Google algorithm proved too much. I was buried.
This is fine. This is GOOD echoed back to me. Evans was good, nice, destined for a modest life. But it was not me.
Life started pummeling me the second I dared to take control of my destiny. Perhaps it’s an initiation of sorts. Are you sure you’re ready?
No, but I didn’t have a choice.
Each battle came in twos or threes. Some brief events required months of recovery time. For every resilient experience that made for a tidy social media post, there were others that passed like energetic kidney stones, quietly in the discomfort of solitude.
As I became curious about my own name, I saw others embodying theirs to my detriment. A Shield used me as one. A narcissist tried to Bind themselves to me against my will, a double dose of maladaptive behavior. A Rich Researcher found my experiences a threat to their riches. I didn’t know someone I deeply loved would abandon me when life pressed us, but it makes sense now— his middle name was Yellow.
While many of my obstacles started with people, my greatest battles were against systems. Against institutions and ideas that would disempower or strip others of their humanity, against boxes, against societal expectations that dictate women die to themselves when they marry. Against my own faulty programming.
As much as I raged against performative justice and demanded authenticity, I ran from my own. I was still fearful, too broken to hold my own identity in public places. I wondered how this change will impact a decade of SEO, accolade, and notoriety. A still, small voice assured me everything will be alright. This was a resurrection.
You needed to put that name down for a little bit. You needed to heal, a friend rightly observed.
I laughed. “Maybe Evans was my Hakuna Matata decade.”
Good. This was GOOD, but it’s time to head back to Pride Rock. It’s time to be great.
My former partner, an ex-French commando, called me a warrior upon meeting me. We’d just met ten minutes before with barely a shared language between us. I was wrapped in a ball cap and sweatpants at a bar, prepped to spend the night sleeping on the airport floor. Perhaps it was a form of armor.
For the first time, someone saw me and wasn’t afraid. Sometimes energy transcends language.
We don’t always know how our names guide us.
My cousin’s parents migrated from Italy. His dad ran a barbershop while his mom worked at home watching the kids. When he grew up, my cousin took a couple years of Italian in college. He described calling home and fumbling to his parents, who both adored and cringed at the mutilation of their mother tongue in their son’s mouth.
Now he practices athletic law and contract negotiation for major sports stars. He still doesn’t speak Italian. His surname: Rinaldi, a powerful advisor.
When an astrologer reads your birth chart, they ask for your birth name. Skeptical but curious, I used a burner email. There is no record of me as anything but Danielle Evans on the Internet, but I wanted to be absolutely certain.
They told me I was a warrior of words. I raised an eyebrow.
“Show me what that means,” I asked, having intuitively built my life on this concept.
Saturn in the first house. Mars in Taurus. A twelfth house Pluto placement. A retrograded Pisces Mercury at 0 degrees. North Node in Aries, sitting on top of my Jupiter. A third house Aquarius Venus. Chiron in Gemini.
I didn’t know what to make of the stars, but I knew my chart was a snapshot of the sky at birth. Placements shifted depending on the time, but I was always going to be Duncan.
Duncan is Scottish, meaning Dark Warrior.
Sometimes two opposing ideas can be true. I had to grow into a name that was always my birthright. In order to embody a name, we have to believe ourselves worthy of everything it offers us. I dodged it for years. Now I’m ready to be me.
My entire name, Danielle Renée Duncan, reads like some New York Times bestseller: God has Judged, Reborn Dark Warrior.
I have no business avoiding such a legacy.
To this point I remain affectionately yours,
Danielle Duncan (Evans)