my name and the story behind it

Every time I meet someone new and tell them my name, first they ask me about the origins of it and then they ask me if it has a meaning. Yes, there is a meaning and a story attached to it, too.

However, my entry into this world was going to be a rough ride from the get-go.

First of all, I didn’t come into this world because I was an end product of a careless, unplanned event in the bedroom. I was wanted. I was planned. Even my books were bought and stacked against a wall, waiting for my arrival. All children’s books, mostly Jules Verne. There were some children’s books written by Turkish authors such as Yalvaç Ural, Aziz Nesin and many others including some fantastic Scandinavian authors. But I took my time, didn’t I?

My parents, entering the venue where their pre-wedding party took place. It must have been the era of beehives. Amy Winehouse would’ve loved that.

I love these two photos from their pre-wedding ceremony. They are signing their marriage certificate. The look on my Dad’s face says “Oh, shit!” and in the second photo, my Mum looks triumphant.

My parents were so in love and they wanted to start a family immediately but there were some complications. The problem was that my Mum had this incredibly hostile environment to the degree that any sperm would be killed at the beginning of their journey. It is such an irony when you think about how much of a good host she’d been all her life. The fertility treatment was quite complicated and they had to start all over again a few times. To make things worse, the peer pressure was getting to them. Well, after four years of trying and persisting, I came along.

I was on my way to the book club meeting on one of those evenings. I looked up to the sky and the moon was so beautiful, so mysterious and so majestic. It was also quite big which made me think it was closer to the earth that night. I thought to myself: this must be what it was like on the night I was born.

When I got to the Italian Restaurant where we held our book club meetings, they were all talking about the moon. They asked me if I had seen it and I told them the story of my name…

The night my mother went into labour, my father was sent out to get a midwife. Around that time, we weren’t brought into this world in the sterile environment of a hospital. On the contrary, we were born at home. So, my father was just about to leave the house he said he looked up at the sky just before he’d left the house and saw this beautiful full moon—very much like the one I saw on that book club meeting night. He told to himself: “If it’s a girl, I will name her Ayşım.” Ayşım means someone as beautiful as the moon. And so I was named. The moment I finished my story, I heard a loud gasp from one of those ladies.

There aren’t many Ayşıms in Turkey. They are mostly Ayşims. Mine became Ayşim due to a clerical error at the time of replacing my national ID and I am still not happy about it to this day. The problem here is that even though it was the registry office’s fault, to change it back, I would have to take them to court and pay for legal fees. It’s ridiculous!