What's in a Name?: Drawing and Exploration by Hayley Palmer

What’s in a name? A lot, I’ve learned. I barely know how to write my Chinese name. There’s a kind of disconnect, a feeling of Other, when I claim to be Chinese but have to search for my decade old Chinese school workbooks to remember how to spell my own name. I’ve always had a sort of resentment towards it. Unfair, I know. It was given to me by my aunt, and I should be grateful. But I’ve always seen it as one more thing that makes me Other. It’s basically the same as my name in English. Take the Hay from Hayley and turn the ley into something more like lay. Don’t ask me for specifics, I won’t be able to tell you if you’re pronouncing it wrong. When you look as White as I do, people ask you for proof when you claim to be Other. Can you speak Chinese? No, not more than a toddler can. What about your name? What about it? My last name is Scottish or English or Not Chinese. Nothing to show you there. Do you have a Chinese name? Yeah, it’s 希利. So...just Hayley? It doesn’t sound very Chinese. Yeah, I guess, I know. What’s in a name, after all?