Assignment #6 "What's in a name" rewrite

What's in a name 

It’s great that an everyday thing, such as a name, can tell someone so much about their background and in my case their personality. Names nowadays (in particular the US) have lost a lot of their meaning but in most cultures around the world this is not the case. My name on the other hand does not belong to a particular culture, it is a peculiar mix of East and West. Shoghi is a Persian religious name, in Farsi it translates into “one who longs”. In my formative years the only thing I was longing for was for my classmates to stop making fun of my unselected moniker. Growing up in a mainly Latino neighborhood in Brooklyn and being Latino myself the name calling was incessant. But to be fair, what self-respecting 10 year old wouldn’t make fun of my name? I figured the best thing would be change my given name, but as the years passed me by so did the less mature. Most people I am introduced to now don’t burst out laughing when they hear my response to “What’s your name?”

I would be the first to admit that being Latino and having a Persian first name is rather strange, but having this name with its two radically different backgrounds and influences has also influenced me and who I am to a great degree. My name also has given me many chances to tell a bit about my parents, in particular my mother, to whoever is willing to listen.

My mother Yolanda Azucena Celleri was born in Cuenca, Ecuador of Italian and Spanish lineage. She and her 14 brothers and sisters grew up in a religious Roman Catholic household and they were all raised for the most part to be your typical pious South American Catholics. However that was not to be, some Persian missionaries made sure of that.

My mother and most of her sisters and brothers “converted” to the Baha’i Faith almost forty years ago by those abovementioned missionaries. One of the major figures of this religion was Shoghi Effendi, hence my first name. My mom lobbied my dad long and hard to name me in honor of this Baha’i historical figure. My father finally gave in saying that at least I was being named after a religious man. The Baha’i Faith has influenced my outlook on morality for most of my life. Its main tenets are very liberal which is how many would describe me. These include: the equality between men and woman, the elimination of racism and the “harmony” of religion and science. I still don’t quite understand the latter but I would be the first to admit that the Bahai belief system smacks more of modernity than the Inquisition. At this point of my life I am an atheist and naturally don’t subscribe to any religion, but even so I do admire the aforementioned principles of the Bahai faith.

On to the family name: Fret. This explanation is a bit murkier as you will see. My dad, Carlos Manuel Fret, is (in my estimation) a very typical Puerto Rican in his age group (early 70s). He is very religious (he has been a preacher in the Pentecostal sect for twenty years), loves sports, in particular baseball and boxing, and has a very conservative outlook on life and politics (see above religious affiliation). We never ever see eye to eye on anything expect that Alex Rodriguez is an unbelievably overpaid baseball player. The only thing setting him apart from other Puerto Ricans is his last name, Fret. Upon questioning him about this, all he divulges is that his dad’s family came from an “island in the Mediterranean that used to be owned by the Spanish but isn’t anymore”. Apparently my father isn’t as interested in our family history as much as I am. Thankfully I am a sucker for history and maps and deduced that this can only mean Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon.

Corsica’s flag has always had a soft spot in my heart. The flag for the island nation is a white background with a moors head on it. On this flag the moor is wearing a white bandana on his forehead. The significance of the bandana is in its placement: the fact that it is not being used to cover the moors’ eyes is important. The covering of the eyes by the bandana was a symbol of subjugation whereas the wearing of it on the forehead was and is a sign of defiance, for this reason it’s definitely my favorite flag. The name Fret and its history capture the rebellious non conformist side of me that always roots for the underdog. I have seen myself embracing this side of me more and more as I have grown older, the paradox is that I have never been close to my father’s side of the family. Go figure.

Upon further investigation I found that in the mid 1800s (before the Spanish lost control of the Caribbean and after they lost control of most of South America) the Spanish Royal family had offered thousands of rural Roman Catholic families of non Hispanic descent to move to its colonies with an offer of free land. At the beginning more than 400 families left Corsica for Puerto Rico and luckily I found a list of these families’ names. The closest thing to Fret was Fraticelli and Fratacci. Perhaps there was a second boat with a Freticini on board, who knows. What I do know is that I feel lucky that I am able to somewhat track back my family heritage. Due to colonialism and slavery some of us don’t know where our names or even or families come from. That would be unimaginable for me.