When I was born, the choice of my name was given to my brother. A three year old! Benjamin Daniel or Daniel Benjamin? Obviously, he chose Benjamin Daniel. I mean, I’m not called D. Benjamin or Professor D! Still, the dubious origin of my name irritated me for a long time.
Benjamin is Hebrew for “seated at the right hand of the father” or the most-important son. Yeah, whoever made that one up was high. I was never my dad’s favourite. That was reserved for my brother, Richard the III. He was the golden child. I was the little rebel. I had long hair and listened to heavy metal. I broke curfew and was kicked off buses. I did poorly in math and would have failed out of it hadn’t my teacher took pity of me and given me a D- for “working so hard.” I was weak, shy, and scared. My brother was a sports captain (cross country) and academic all-star, popular and well-respected. So me as the “right hand son?” Not so much. Oh, and on top of being the black sheep of the family, I was a shrimp, then a fat shrimp, then a cheerleader of average height, and then Snow King who went by the nickname “Benny.”
I had a lot of nicknames in high school. Some of my favourites were: C, Big Guy, Malachi, and Bennyhana. No one ever called me Ben except my parents (unless my mother went apoplectic and called me Bill, her hated brother’s name, Brian, Beelzebub, or whatever until she remembered what she named me). I liked the nicknames. They gave me roles to play instead of who I feared I really was… a dork. I didn’t want to be that. I wasn’t smart or cool enough to stand under that neon sign of individuality. I even tried changing my name to B. J. to shed that terrifying identity, but that went over about as well as my desire to have long hair in a largely republican family. So I was Ben until college.
When I started at Saint John’s University, I immediately became Daniel. It confused some people and hurt my parents, but they tried to respect it. I loved it. College was a fresh start with a fresh name. No one knew I had been five feet until 9th grade or that I gained thirty pounds over the summer before 8th grade. No one knew I had been kicked off buses or picked up by the cops for breaking curfew. It was a new day!
That lasted until December when my editor on the newspaper told me no one could find me in the directory (we were listed by our first names). While I was proofing newspaper tiles, I saw he christened me “B. Daniel” on my by-line. He said it sounded catchy, and I agreed. A new era began as I embraced B. Daniel as my moniker. I was becoming well-known for student politics and my newspaper columns. I was unique and felt powerful. I still hid the inner dork (unless my friends and I had Star Wars marathons, which, by definition, epitomize dork), but I was no longer afraid of being weak and shy. As B. Daniel, I was outspoken and sassy. I lipped off to Austrian nobility and entertained friends with stories. People I didn’t know personally would come up to me and congratulate me on my articles. They felt like they knew me.
But they didn’t.
Oh, the irony. The whole “B. Daniel” name was given to me. Who I was had been defined by someone else. I didn’t know me. I became so wrapped up in the “B. Daniel” persona I had been given and cultivated, I felt like I was losing my true individuality to a monster I helped create. I realized several of my friends didn’t know me well. If I weren’t bouncing around, they said, “Who are you?” I felt trapped. So I decided to pull back, stop using B. Daniel as my public name and allow a little of the weaker, quieter Ben to come back out. I told my most intimate friends and family to call me Ben to remove any barriers being B. Daniel had set up between us. I am now Benjamin Daniel Rösch and proud of it.
It’s crazy, but I had to run away from who I was to become who I am. And it has made all the difference.
