What's in a name?

I never thought it mattered.  I knew that Estonian was my first language, and that there are certain nuances to thought that only exist for me in it.  I know that it is the language in which I feel most at home, and in which I feel most centered, and, even though I have lost a lot of my vocabulary through disuse, there's a certain sense of home, and comfort, and joy in hearing the familiar lilt of the words, spoken.

What I wasn't prepared for, was the impact of hearing my name, spoken by someone I have a romantic interest in.  Now, my name is fairly similar-sounding, pronounced Anglicized, and in the original Estonian, and you'd have to really listen to hear the difference, but to me, I don't hear my name most of the time, I hear some variation of it.

It wasn't until hearing K say my name on the phone last night, that I felt my insides melt, and my toes curl, and had a moment of thinking that just being able to say my name correctly was a way to really get inside me, to have a direct line to a place right at the heart of me that very few people besides my family ever get to.


 We were joking about names and spellings, and she asked me about hers, and whether I thought it in English, or Estonian in my head, and I said, in Estonian, with an "of course" kind of tone, and then I said it to her.

I could hear her having the same kind of moment, on her end of the phone.  For people who go out into the world and never hear their true names, and who've never heard them spoken on a lover's lips, it's kind of a revelation to hear a love interest call you by your true name, the one you were given as a child, that no one besides family, or Esto community, could ever say, and that got changed by the greater society, for their ease of pronunciation.

Like I said before two strands of my life that have never touched before.  It's interesting.  :)