Goodwin by birth. Baskerville by Deed. Sophie by degrees.

“What’s in a name? A nose by any other name would smell as good.”

Most people do not get to choose their own name.

I’ve known a few who have taken a bold and societally risky step to pick a completely new name, and new identity if you like (but not in a fraudulent Reginald Perrin fashion!) but they really are few and far between.

For most people, the only name-change they tend to experience is through marriage or civil partnership. Even here, the decisions can have unexpected ramifications. I have warned more than one person about the edge-cases they would run into when choosing to adopt their partner’s surname containing a space. Le Blanc is a surname, but many systems cannot handle it. You’ll end up with Blanc as your surname, Le as a middle – or even worse, first – name. And this matters because border systems, health systems, insurance systems – all sorts of systems – match us using combinations of surname, first name, DoB etc. If the surname doesn’t match, you have problems.

Many years ago, I changed surname. That was a choice, and one that I have never regretted – despite setting something of a record with one organisation for which I had to notify them, in writing, not once but to eleven different parts of the organisation individually. Flushing out the edge-cases, as ever, me.

I now have a part-time new first name, which I chose myself. Although in many ways it chose itself.

This is the essence of the title to this page:

Goodwin by birth: I never chose this
Baskerville by Deed: This name I did choose, and adopted it via Deed Poll. Early enough to grab myself the unregistered domain baskerville.net.
Sophie by degrees: This is who I am becoming. Who I feel like I really am. I chose the name because it fitted so well.

And I’ve started to think about what will happen if / when I decide to adopt that as my actual legal name. I have not yet decided exactly when, or whether, to make the change legally. But names can become real through use long before an official document catches up. Sophie already appears in official documents; she is declared as an alias for vetting purposes, for example.

After much thought, I have decided to treat myself to no fewer than three middle names. Well why not… my children have two middle names each, my mother has three. And there isn’t a per-character charge for a Deed Poll. Yet.

Sophie Ada Mathison Violet Baskerville

Break it down!

Let’s break it down.

But, just maybe, without the outrageous MC Hammer trousers though.

Sophie

The name fitted like a glove. Sophie was happy, confident, brave. These and many other things that I was not. If the name fits, wear it. So I have been.

So… Sophie

Ada

I chose Ada for a whole raft of reasons. Ada Lovelace is a famous figure in the origins of computing. But less widely known is that she was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron. And even less widely known is that Lord Byron expected his child to be a “glorious boy” and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl. So here we already have some historical issues with gender and gender expectations.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 to 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She was the first to recognise the machine had applications beyond pure calculation. Lovelace is often considered the first computer programmer.

So… Ada

Mathison

Alan Mathison Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) needs no introduction.

But using his surname would be the very pinnacle of arrogance.

His first name is not terribly distinctive (and indeed, is the same as my original middle name).

So that leaves his middle name, and I like it because if you know, you know. Otherwise it’s just a slightly decorative, slightly unusual name.

A man whose genius I am not worthy to even attempt to describe.¹

I have very few personal heroes. Alan Mathison Turing is first amongst them.

So… Mathison

Violet

Violet, because it is a pure form of purple, and also because it is not that unusual as a name.

Purple is a combination of red and blue, whereas Violet is defined as the colour of light between roughly 380 and 435 nanometres wavelength.

Of course, this is because of the way the human visual system works. Human cone sensitivities overlap. Violet light strongly stimulates the short-wavelength S cones (“blue”) and weakly stimulates the long-wavelength L cones (“red”), while stimulating the M cones (“green”) relatively little.

The brain therefore receives a strong blue signal plus a smaller red signal, with little green, resembling the neural pattern produced by mixing red and blue light. So spectral violet and non-spectral purple can look similar, although they are physically quite different.

Purple is Sophie’s signature colour, and has been from the very start.

So… Violet

Baskerville

1066 and all that.

When you have a family tree which includes Richard II Duke of Normandy, Æthelred the Unready, Baldric the Teuton, Richard III Duke of Normandy, Edward the Confessor and more… well really, it would be rude not to, surely?!

There is also a historical facet about availability. My original copy of this document was unfortunately lost in a house fire without having been scanned digitally. The author was long since deceased.

I was able to recover a copy from, unbelievably, the Mormons’ Granite Mountain Records Vault near Salt Lake City in Utah, USA. It can be amazing just where data ends up.

I chose Baskerville long before Sophie emerged, but it was already an act of defining myself rather than merely accepting the identity assigned at birth. After nearly thirty years, it no longer feels like an adopted surname. It is simply my name.

In Conclusion

This is the name I may one day make legally and completely mine:

Sophie Ada Mathison Violet Baskerville.

Goodwin was given to me. Baskerville was chosen. Ada, Mathison, and Violet recognise some of the people and concepts that have helped to shape me. Sophie is different. Sophie is not simply a name I selected; she is the person I have gradually allowed myself to become.

Goodwin by birth. Baskerville by Deed. Sophie by degrees.

Footnotes

A deliberate echo of Deep Thought’s description of the computer that would succeed it: a machine whose parameters it was “not worthy to calculate”, but which it would nevertheless design.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
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