Do You Have a Nickname?

A personal essay

We’re gathered around a table, sharing our frustrations about job search. I tell them how I rarely get interviews and that my non-linear path is the likely problem: I’m overqualified for entry-level jobs and I lack some specific experience for the senior ones.

Later a former recruiter asks me how to pronounce my name. I tell her. She doesn’t get it. I repeat. She goes to my LinkedIn profile, hoping the written form would help. It doesn’t. She listens to the recording of my name. It’s too noisy out there, she can’t hear it.

“Do you have a nickname?” She asks. I hesitate. Yes, I do have a nickname. I’m Byur for my family, Bubushik for my grandmother, Byurie for my friends. But I am Byurakn professionally and I don’t intend to become someone else.

“This might be the problem,” she goes on, “when the hiring team is sitting around a table and discussing candidates, the names they can pronounce and the names they can’t makes a difference.”

She confirms my suspicions.

I have two versions of my CV. I go by my real name on one and I’m Bjørk Kølln on the other. Bjørk sounds pretty similar to Byurakn, and I don’t care if people mispronounce my name — I respond to everything that starts with a B. But the CV with Bjørk has never been submitted anywhere.

In immigrant communities there is a lot of talk about correctly spelling and pronouncing foreign names. I’m content when people try to address me at all. In Zoom calls, my raised hand is often ignored because the meeting facilitator doesn’t know how to address me. In real life, it’s slightly easier, they can just turn to me.

So I’m happy when Danes and everyone else in Denmark make some effort of saying my name out loud. And I don’t correct them. But Byurakn makes me forgettable, unnoticeable and completely ignored when it comes to job applications in a fiercely competitive job market.

I come home, open my LinkedIn profile and add Bjørk as part of my name. It doesn’t feel right. It’s not me. So I add a line in my about section, inviting people to call me that if it’s easier for them.

It’s not just Denmark. My name is also rare in Armenia, where I grew up. I remember teachers mispronouncing it. I remember ending up in the military medicine course that was meant for male students only and almost being kicked out of the University for having missed an entire semester. I remember being addressed as that girl with the weird name and being asked for shorter forms or nicknames. Somehow it didn’t bother me.

I try to recall moments in my life when I was called something else. As a teenager, I had created this fictional persona Tori, whose real name was Victoria and she was my best friend and loved Tori Amos. She’d participate in radio station quizzes and games and be all mysterious and the guy who had a crush on me wanted to meet her.

And then I was Charlotte in my French class. We all had our French names. Unlike the others who were assigned their ones, I had chosen mine. And I was comfortably going by Charlotte during the entire year and even afterwards, when hanging out with my fellow students.

I have submitted short stories to competitions under pseudonyms. I’ve been Natasha Hamidyan in one, where my father was in the jury and I didn’t want him to know about it. I have been Vari at some other point and am still entertaining the idea that I should try pseudonyms as a writer to keep my literary and corporate identities separate. I’ve had tons of fake social media accounts under different names.

But going by another name on my CV where I’m expected to write the truth feels like I’m leaving part of myself behind.

In the evening, there is an online meeting about my father’s novel. It was published posthumously, so my brother and I are the ones invited to those talks. Naturally, the conversation goes further to my ancestors. My brother tells the story of Vahan Cheraz, my great-grandfather, who fought the Turks in Byurakn Mountains back in the beginning of the 20th century. They won the battle and decided to name their first-borns Byurakn. My grandmother was his first and only child and she was named Byurakn. I inherited it from her.

Byurakn means ten thousand springs. What does Bjørk mean?

I’m reminded who I am. I go to my LinkedIn profile and remove Bjørk from it.