Sara(h) Smile

Being born a Sara(h) in the 1980s was no easy thing. To begin with, there were probably several newborns in every hospital ward with the same name, as Sara(h) was the fifth most popular girl’s name of the decade. Then came daycare and elementary school, where initials became key in differentiating between us. “I remember being known as Sarah T. even in kindergarten,” writes Sarah Talkovsky ’06, in an e-mail. By the time college acceptance letters arrived, it was second nature to ignore people shouting the name in public. Having desensitized ourselves, we hopped on planes to Cambridge, blissfully unaware of the phenomenon we were about to encounter.

Harvard’s size changes the scope of the problem slightly. There are 25 Sara(h)s in the class of 2007 alone. Thefacebook.com returns 176 results for Sara(h) as a first or middle name. That’s nearly four percent of female undergraduates who share the same name. Extracurriculars abound with us, sections usually have at least one—in fact, so do most entryways. If you’re lucky like me, the Housing Office will assign two to your room, forcing the two of you to become known as “H’ and “H-less.” Being surrounded by dozens of people who share your name can cause you to develop an identity crisis fairly quickly, especially in college, where most people are already on a quest to find themselves.

“The hardest thing,” said Sara Eckhouse ’06, “is when I’m in a big group and I’ll hear my name and think someone is talking to me, but of course it’s one of the other 20 Sara(h)s there.” Indeed, it is easy to become frustrated when something so important as a name ceases to be self-defining for a person. At Harvard, Sara(h) does not mean me. It means all of us, and we strive to find different ways to make ourselves unique. Some, like my roommate and I, adopt nicknames. Some start to go by their middle names or even take on an entirely new first name. Most start off being known by region or dorm, although in the system is not without glitches (read: “Massachusetts Sarah”).

At times like these, Sara(h)s want to curse their parents for making them just another face in the crowd. It’s that much harder to stand out, especially at Harvard, when your name is as common as ours. But ultimately, what we gain from our homogeneity outweighs the downside. The unremarkable nature of our name forces people to distinguish us by our finer details. Having three Sara(h)s in my creative writing class last semester trained the professor to know us by our work, not just by our name. We’re described as musicians, athletes, and poets. Two syllables are not enough to encapsulate us, and we’ve managed to make our names merely the beginning of our identities.

So Sara(h)s, stop thinking that you got cheated in the name game. Take pride in your name—it’s matriarchal, it means “princess,” and it’s beautiful. But realize that it is just that: a name. It does not define you, and it does not reflect who you are. It can only help you throughout life, and if nothing else, people will never have an excuse for forgetting it. Get out there and revel in being part of a multitude, and if this isn’t enough to reassure you, go talk to a Jo(h)n. I hear they have a similar problem.

Sara Joy Culver, a Crimson editorial editor, is an English concentrator in Eliot House.