My Name

Yes, that's me celebrating the day I was born - and named!

During our time in Lamu, we settled into a routine. We rose early to swim among the mangroves. The retreat included 10 women, mainly of a certain age. We climbed a plastic step stool into a hand-carved mahogany boat and embarked on our journey. After a few minutes, the crew lowered a ladder into the warm water, and the current swept us away so swiftly that we momentarily felt as if we were swimming with renewed, surprising, youthful energy. Upon returning from our swim, Joy, our yoga instructor, led us in practice. We bent, stretched, and attempted to balance by the pool of our rented house. Joy played calming music, accompanied by noisy birds, braying donkeys, and occasionally, the call to prayer from the loudspeakers.

In the afternoons, we explored new artistic pursuits. One day, we learned to sculpt using found objects; the next, we learned to paint by first sketching objects, then mixing paints, and finally creating rubbings over paper to craft even more diverse creations.

Autumn asked us to write about our names, so I wrote about mine. Everyone else shed tears as they read their stories, and I wasn't sure if it was due to the power of their narratives or their gratitude for someone taking the time to listen. We heard stories of growing up in an idyllic countryside, feeling like an outsider for not wanting children but desiring an active sex life, stories of growing up in Africa, marrying young, and realizing years later that the marriage was a mistake, and one poignant story of a woman named after and raised by her aunt. That same aunt passed away while caring for the woman's young son. Despite suffering a heart attack, she held the boy tightly, keeping him safe until his parents returned to find her gone, but her spirit was alive in their son.

All of the stories were powerful and felt like a gift. Here is mine:

My name is Pamela Dannelle Simkin Francis. Pamela was my parents' second choice because my mother and aunt were both pregnant at the same time. They agreed that if they had a girl, she would be named Jennifer. My cousin arrived a month before me, but I'm pleased to have a less common name, as many of my peers share the name Jennifer.

The name Pamela means "all sweetness" or honey. In this way, the name was more of my parents' wishful thinking than a prophecy, as I've been called many things in life, but "all sweetness" isn't one of them. I've read that Pamela is the name of one of the first published novels. So while I may not be "all sweetness," my parents captured my lifelong love of literature.

Dannelle is my father's creation. Derived from the French name Dannielle, he thought he would Americanize it by dropping the French "I" in the middle. This creative spelling led me to spell it differently for several years in elementary school, as well-meaning teachers kept correcting me to what they assumed was the correct spelling.

Simkin is my father's family name. A family that fled Belarus to avoid conscription into the Russian army. They had already survived many nights of violence as pogroms destroyed Jewish villages. When the Russian military came to take young conscripts, my grandfather and his brothers escaped to the United States. Later, family members returned to the continent to fight for the cause of Palestine.

Francis is the name I took upon marriage. I considered keeping my maiden name as I am proud of my heritage and all it represents. But when I married a Black man, I knew it would be challenging for the world to see us as a family. This small, transgressive act of adding my name to his to form a family would help the broader community see how closely connected we are. Simkin would live on when we had our daughter, and we gave her Simkin as her correctly spelled middle name.

Altogether, I love my name and believe it suits me. I'm unique, like Pamela, and I adore literature in all its forms. My heritage as a woman of Jewish descent, married to a Jamaican man, living in Texas, feels distinctly American, like the de-Frenchified version of my middle name. The Simkins have survived and fought for justice for generations. And while I've endured different hardships, such as the death of my sister from cancer and my mother's suicide, I still consider myself a fighter and a survivor. Francis, my chosen family—the family I've created with my husband—is at the heart of my life. Our group of five is why I left my legal career for a decade to focus on my children, and then returned to that career to model what a professional mother could look like. Our interracial family is the reason I spent five years advocating for racial equity measures in our local schools, before the school board, the Department of Education, and in the courts. Ultimately, the well of love from the Francis family allowed me to be vulnerable enough to openly confess my true passion for writing and publish this blog.