As I ran my hand down the smooth cover of my book, I saw it for the first time. My middle initial. Only when I held Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City in my hands did I realize that the author’s name contained my middle initial, “J.”
It was too late to change; the printing run was done; the books were out in the world. Yet my name as author appeared strange. After all, I had built a scholarly identity around my first and last name, clean and simple.
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t approved the cover. But I had fixated on the design, overlooking how my name was part of that cover as well. Was it because my name was so familiar that I overlooked it and instead fixated on the imagery? What does that hold for the other blind spots in our assessments of our own creations?
Setting Ourselves Apart
Names matter. But names alone cannot singularize ourselves. There are far too many humans, each with a name also used by others. I used to think my name was unique, but no longer. There are at least two people in the world share my first and last name. Occasionally, I get emails about family reunions, pizza orders, and even clothing returns intended for another Allison Truitt out there in the world. I discovered them through the duckduckgo name test: Just enter your name in the search engine and type in the string, “Allison Truitt.” Not one, but two. My discovery was not the most surprising. A colleague did the test with me and learned of a welterweight boxer with the same name. The search engine also presented several mug shots of the boxer. Not only did the two people have the same name but they also resembled each other.
Fingerprints do a better job in singularizing people, imprints that reveal through the arches, loops, and whorls that create an embodied signature unlike any other.
Perhaps this is the reason why the press included my middle initial. Better to mark one Allison Truitt from the other Allison Truitts by inserting the middle initial. More likely, I hadn’t given my name much thought when I signed the contract. After all, I hadn’t even seen my name on the digital cover of the book. My oversight confirms my hunch that our naming and citation practices are not as straightforward as we think.
Status and Credentials
What I didn’t use is the title, “Dr.,” or Ph.D. In 2020, a debate erupted over who could claim the title of “Dr” with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that chided Dr. Jill Biden for prefacing her name with that designator. The op-ed writer suggested only people who had delivered babies had the right to that title. Of course, stories abound of ambulance drivers, taxi drivers, and even startled spouses and siblings who had had a hand, and yet they would not claim that title. Most scholars I know do not publish as “Dr.” or even list their highest degree, PhD after their names, expect as a gesture of authority on behalf of a student for whom they write a letter. When faced with the selection in a dropdown box, I choose “Ms.” Over “Dr.”
My lessons in the economy of status and privilege came early in life. My father was a doctor, a general practitioner. One summer when working at his office, I called him “Dad,” and he reprimanded me. “I’m Dr. Truitt in this office.” When my piano teacher was awarded her doctorate in music education, my mother had a reaction like the one espoused in the Wall Street Journal. The title of “Dr.” belongs medical doctors, not academic anthropologists or suburban piano teachers. But our teacher insisted, and I soaked in her authority so much that I only think of her as “Dr. Vertenstein.” But I don’t think of myself as Dr. Truitt, or even Allison J. Truitt. In an article that featured her success in teaching even over zoom, the New York Times referred to her as Ms. Vertenstein, not Dr. But the article notes, “Friends call her Nellie, she said, but most students and parents respectfully call her Dr. Vertenstein, a nod to her doctorate in music and her formal matter.”
In the academy, these designators matter. At a recent dissertation defense, the time-honored moment in which the student presents the dissertation to the committee for discussion and debate. The other members respectfully referred to each other as “Dr,” a reminder that some rituals, such as this one, are important rites of passage that culminate in a change of status. Once the student submitted the approved dissertation with the requisite signatures, then the student would also claim the title, Dr. That difference between who claimed “Dr.” and who could not was performed in the moment of the examination.
Maiden Name as My Name
If I hesitate to invoke the title, “Dr. Truitt,” and I dismiss my middle initial, I never even considered not keeping my last name. My spouse’s family name is Vietnamese. Had I taken it, I may have had to reckon with questions of whether I had appropriated a history and heritage that was not my own. At the time, such considerations weren’t at the forefront of my mind. I had launched my career as Allison Truitt, and so it would stay. It never occurred to him as women in Vietnam do not take on their husband’s name. The name ties the woman to her family of origin. So, I have never not gone by Truitt. It’s just the “J” that seems so odd.
In 2016 I registered for domain with my own—allisontruitt.com, clean and simple. For years, I let the site lay fallow. Once a year or so, I would log in, update the widgets, delete the numerous spam emails and their promises of driving customers and profits to my site. As I step into 2021, I have decided to use this site for something more–to reach people beyond the classroom, the paywalls of academic journals, and the closed-off conference venues. I’ve again shed the “J.”
