The Names

You may be wondering whether your life would be different if your parents had chosen another name for you. Haven’t we all, at some point? Maybe your mom still mentions the name your dad wanted, or vice versa, and you try it on in your head for a moment. What would it have been like to move through the world as someone else? (Cybil, in my case. Or Jade, if my mom had won.)

But names can carry so much—family history, legacy, hopes, or expectations.

In The Names, a baby boy is given three different names and, with each one, a different possible life. His mother and sister orbit those shifting identities too, each of them shaped by the complicated act of choosing (or not choosing) what gets passed down.