MY NAME IS KAREN AND I DO NOT WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER
Your name is an introduction and a greeting. It is one of the first words you speak when you meet other people, and one of the first your friends will use when they greet you. Your name is a blessing; your name is a wish and your name casts a shadow. What you are christened is a summary of your life in just a few letters. Your full name accompanies you as a permanent marker, from certificate of birth to the chisel on your tombstone.
My parents gave me the name Karen. I've never really connected with it. I believe my mother scraped the bottom of the barrel of monikers and Karen stuck to me like toilet paper on the heel of a shoe. My siblings were all christened with ancestral and/or saints’ names. I'm the most Catholic of all the kids, but there is no Saint Karen; some believe that the name Karen is derived from St. Catherine of Genoa, a member of the Franciscan order, who is fondly referred to as "the apostle of purgatory." There’s also an apocryphal St. Karen, patron saint of spinsters and washerwomen. I imagine her symbols are skid marks and hobo teeth.
Female names cycle in and out of fashion faster than male names. The XX chromosome names often reflect trends as well as race and class markers. At one point in the 1960s Karen was the third most popular name—why, I don’t know. There weren’t any Karen superheroines, no wonder dogs with the name, no disease-curing scientists or feminist writers or daredevils. It’s the rainy Monday morning of names. But for some reason the name spread like a weed among the female children of the time.
Today, those weeds have borne bitter fruit. “Karen” is slang for an irritating, antagonistic, privileged middle-aged woman who sports a lady mullet. She's entitled, tacky, garish, possibly bigoted. She's a font of abrasive behavior, a stock female villain and makes her children listen to Kidz Bop.
Names fascinate us because of what they say about us, both as individuals and as part of society. Names are cultural indicators, and we associate specific characteristics with certain names. Every name represents an idea--an image or a memory of those who share it. It is a signature we are wedded to, carrying it on our journey from birth to death. I've always felt disconnected from Karen. I am divorced from it. This marker of identification never felt like me. Karen is a ghost. I feel like I got mislabeled. When I go to the coffee joint and they ask me for my name, I tell them it’s for “Jack.” Your name should cast a light over you, but in my case, it feels more like the cloud you draw when you play Pictionary and the answer is “monkey fart.”
There was no close relative or mentor in my life who shared the same two hard syllables with me, the graceless KAR rubbing against the hard REN. To my ears the name is not music but the sound of two rusting tuna trawlers crashing into each other, at first quickly and with great force, and then with a long slow grinding that tears both vessels into shipwrecks, but not the interesting kind of shipwreck. The name you’re given is like a house you inhabit. I filled the houseboat SS Karen with dynamite and lit a match.
My rejection of my name was a part of my identity, even when I was very young. My best friend from primary school announced to our second-grade class that there are too many Karens and that I should be called Duff. This one stuck. I was mislabeled at birth, but was luckily reborn as Duff.
Nominative determinism is the theory that a person's name can have a significant influence in shaping key aspects of their character and even profession. The classic example is the scientific paper on urology by Splatt and Weedon. Duff is most widely known as an acronym for Designated Ugly Fat Friend—the less-attractive member of a clique who the pretty girls keep around so that their beauty shines even brighter by comparison. Duff is also slang for your posterior. As a verb, to duff someone is to practice a deception or steal. A duff is a cheat. In golf, a swing that is so misjudged and ineffective that the club hits the ground before the ball—that’s a duff. Something duff is inferior and a duffer is a peddler of counterfeit goods. Duff is the decomposing leaf litter on the forest floor. It's the finger-staining dust left in the bottom of a Flaming Hot Cheetos bag. A woman who is “up the duff” is carrying an unplanned pregnancy. A duff is a stiff suet pudding boiled in a bag.
Only some of these apply to me. I’ve never golfed and never will. Posterior—well, I have one, it is unremarkable. Did I turn out to be like the dust at the bottom of a Cheetos bag? You’ll have to judge that for yourself, though I like to think I am spicy and delicious. I find Duff to be euphonious and I like it as a name, though when it comes to its significance, I may have exchanged the inferno of Karen for the tepid frying pan of Duff.
Duff is also the name of the shredding guitarist for Guns N’ Roses, who were at their height of popularity when I was an MTV VJ. Young Michael Andrew McKagan also rejected his birth name for a preferred nickname. As Duff McKagan, he was known for wild debauchery, and did the Duff name proud.
Nominative determinism isn’t an iron law, though. You define your name by the way you live your life. Whether I have done a service to the name Duff is, again, something you’ll have to sort out. When it comes to cultural impact, it’s a close race between me and the beer Homer Simpson guzzles.
I’ve actively tried to be the opposite of everything the name Karen now stands for. I don’t demand to see the manager over petty slights. I try to be courteous and respectful of others. I am mindful of the privilege I have and do my best not to wield it, unless it’s to help someone who needs it. And I have never made my son listen to Kidz Bop.
There’s a belief that we view someone as lucky if their name sounds like luck and has the same number of letters. Jack is considered the luckiest male name. (Lucy is perceived to be the luckiest female name. Karen must surely be the least lucky.) This belief is known as “associative magic.” It is used to describe the linking of similar attributes with the hope that by association, good things will result. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Jack is one of the most popular male names in the U.S.
There is a Roman proverb “Nomen est omen,” meaning your name is destiny—nominative determinism, classical style. But I don’t believe that your name actually makes you lucky. Seneca, one of my Philosophy All-Stars, wrote that “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Whatever your name, you’re already the product of a staggering amount of good luck. The sperm cell that led to you outraced 249,999,999 others to the prize of the female oocyte. That’s a feat of swimming more impressive than Michael Phelps’ measly 28 medals. What would you have been if that little fella had been tired that day and another one came in first? Thank your lucky stars that didn’t happen. And what were the odds you would be born back when the universe began in the Big Bang?
Most people believe that miracles are rare, but I prefer Albert Einstein’s view that there are two ways to look at the world: either nothing is a miracle, or everything is a miracle. According to Littlewood’s Law, you can expect to experience a one in a million event every month. Miracles are all around us, so keep your heart and your eyes open.
You are humanity’s greatest upgrade. You are a miracle, a wonder. You are 40 trillion cells thrumming with life force. There is an original, radiant and unrepeatable brilliance within you. This is the raw material from which we shape our lives. Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher whose maxims run on repeat in my heart, believed that if you make beautiful choices, you will make a beautiful life. I’ve chosen to do my best as Duff, but a Karen can do it too.