In the winter of 2017, I received a $600 tax return. Instead of paying off a credit card, I purchased the carlyhood.com domain name and a seat in a Hugo House class, believing these monetary investments would force me to write and legitimize myself. I was determined to build an audience, cross-promoting my blog on my Twitter feed with hashtags like #writeeveryday, #writerslife, and #writedrunk with stock images I doctored on my free Canva account. Looking back at these posts, I cringe. I was flailing, hoping that the external validation found in a retweet or link click would make me feel less like a tryhard and like I earned the title Carly Hood, Writer.

I don’t remember why I stopped adding my work to the blog. My last tweet related to a blog post was Oct. 27, 2017. Regardless, I abandoned the blog, and another Carly Hood paid to claim the domain name in my absence. 

This Carly Hood has a Ph.D (Think Barbie. Wink. Wink.) She is a saxophonist and an adjunct professor living outside Cincinnati. Listening to her rendition of the sax solo in composer Florent Schmitt’s Legende, Op. 66, I was in turmoil. Why had I ever realized that someone might share my full name before? Especially someone more accomplished and purposeful than me? Sure, I had met other Carlys, but I always pretended they didn’t exist. It didn’t matter how they spelled it either – Carley, Carlie, Carlee, Carleigh, Carli, or all the K bastardizations. Did I hate them because I thought they prescribed what a person named ‘Carly’ should or shouldn’t be like? Probably. I institutionally felt the need to validate my existence by denying theirs. I’ve always either actively avoided other Carlys or did my best to tarnish their good name. I recognize that my reaction is not that of a healthy main character but that of a villain. 

My first name, Carly, is a slotted spoon; my identity is the starchy liquid draining from its holes. It feels hollow, undefinable, malleable. At work conventions, I pick up my layard and badge, stare at my name printed in Helvetica font, and feel like I picked up a stranger’s. When introducing myself, my voice cracks into a surprising vocal fry, like waking with a head cold, unable to string the consonants and vowels into an intelligible sound. It’s not that I hate my name, but I do have an unresolved mental block, a slight cognitive dissonance with my sense of self. 

This first-name conundrum isn’t necessarily unique. In the comments section of a post on Nameberry, a popular baby-naming site, a woman thinks her name, Nicole, has a reputation for being trashy. In a blog post, an Emily complains that her name is used too often for lovable but slightly oblivious TV characters. And one man on Reddit worries that his name, Brock, will remind potential dates of the Stanford Rapist. 

Do we fear our names are self-fulfilling prophecies? Do we really believe in these name-given outcomes? The theory of nominative determinism would argue yes, with the hypothesis being that people are strongly inclined to find work that fits their name. And while I wanted to protest this, I remembered that my cheerful first-grade teacher was named Mary Bunch. 

This theoretical causality does not apply to all. Most of us don’t have names like Ava Alder, who seems destined to be an avid bird watcher. So, why do some of us have such negative connotations with our first names? And why do we associate certain first names with a specific personality type or behavior? ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet’, Juliet Capulet complains in that famous Act 2 soliloquy, acknowledging the human impulse to distinguish but contending that names do not contain the essence of a person or an object. But we, the audience, know the power of words; we know that to name something is to know something. At least, this is the lesson biologists and marauding explorers have taught us. 

By naming or nicknaming, we indicate our intimacy, showing how familiar we are with a person or a thing. In this regard, a name becomes a communal and contextual holdfast, often resulting in emotional causality. When we hear the word ‘rose,’ almost all can associate the red, fleshy-petalled flower with romantic machinations, right? So, what’s in a name? Well, a name can be an exclusive entrance ticket. A name can trigger a brawl. A name can be a running joke. A name can make skin tingle. A name can send a blue shock through the extremities. A name is knowledge, and knowledge is always power. 

So, this explains my plucky ambivalence with my first name. It comes down to control, or lack of control over my external image and internal identity. What is a person named ‘Carly’ like? What does my culture think a person named ‘Carly’ should be like? These are the recurring questions I have had since my prepubescent existentialism kicked in. 

With little to no fact-checking, here are all the meanings for the name Carly, uncovered in a 5-minute Google search: free woman, little womanly, small champion, little and strong, warrior. Most sites agree that ‘Carly’ stems from the masculine form ‘Carl,’ which is fitting since I was named after my mother’s grandfather, Carl Madler. 

My father jokes that I was named after Carly Simon, which Nameberry supports. The website claims that the singer-songwriter helped popularize this specific spelling of the name, starting in the 1970s. I am happy to report that the website says the overall usage of the name peaked in the 1990s and has been steadily declining. There’s a joke about my vanity somewhere in there.  

While my first name has always sounded like a question, my last name is the answer. Hood. It is definitive, confident, an absolute. I have always loved my last name. If I ever get married, I will never change it. I especially love it when it is typed or written in all caps. HOOD. But this is not a case of some residual family pride leaking into my identity; I don’t know much about the Hoods on my father’s side. But this does not stop me from feeling an abstract kinship with those who share my last name. So, this brings me to the other Carly Hoods and why I feel such an intense push/pull reaction to these doppelgangers in name only. 

Google and LinkedIn search results of all the living and search-engine-optimized Carly Hoods and their listed professions: 

• Carly Hood, LICSW, Research Social Worker at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
• Carly Hood, Strategic Sustainability Advisor at Wagga Wagga City Council
• Carly Hood, Bartender at Brooksider Bar & Grill
• Carly Hood, Registered Nurse at UW Health
• Carly Hood-Ronick, MPA, MPH, is the Chief Executive Officer at Project Access NOW
• Carly Hood, Student at Depaul University
• Dr. Carly Hood, Adjunct Professor of Saxophone at Thomas More University and Adjunct Instructor at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College
• Carly Hood, Senior Graphic Designer at Investa
• Carly Hood, Global Go-to-Market Operations Associate at New Balance
• Carly Hood, Radiologic Technologist at Nova Medical Centers
• Carly Dowda-Hood, Advance Services Customer Trainer at Hawaiian Telcom
• Carly Hood, Farm Worker at Woodhead Farm
• Carly Hood, Digital Marketing Specialist at Lifetime Brands (Me!)
  • If other Carly Hoods are out there, email me. Don’t worry; I’m not trying to eliminate you. I just want to add you to this list.

How would these Carly Hoods describe themselves if given the opportunity? We are more than our professions. And while there is power in naming, we are more than our names. 

In a recent dream, I put on a one-woman show called A Continuum of Carlys. Each scene was a new vignette where I played a different Carly Hood, all inspired by these real-life doubles. In one vignette, Carly Hood clocks into the Brooksider Bar & Grill. Her boss lets her know that a greenhorn will be shadowing her today. She complains but complies, showing the young bar-back the ins and outs of a busy shift. In another scene, Carly Hood says nothing, only grunting while bringing in hay and shoveling cow shit from stalls on a dairy farm. Another Carly Hood slaps a saline bag and flicks a syringe. Each vignette is disparate from the previous. Each scene’s background fades into darkness. Each Carly Hood’s life is without a definite border. As the scenes change, I feel the most at home in the shadows, in those moments before the stage lights flip on, which is the cue for my following monologue. Finally, when I wake from this dream, I realize that the rising sun in the window is just as bright as any spotlight. That’s the cue for this Carly Hood to get up and write.