A Chad By Any Other Name

When Chad Johnson became Chad Ocho Cinco last week, a few questions begged attention.

1) Did April Fool’s come early this year?

2) Will Cincinnati issue jersey #80 to Ocho Cinco just to reassert the appearance of control?

3) Does changing a name change the man wearing the name?

I’d like to believe changing my name would give me a new identity, and in some ways it certainly would. Name changing alters the primary tag by which I’m addressed (at least to my face!) and creates a new “branding” identity. But aside from the freshness of a new label, I’m not sure it does much else.

When Joey Belle became Albert Belle in the early 90s, he was still hitting monster home runs, still overtly angry, and still chasing kids out of his yard at Halloween. He was essentially the same man because essence is unaffected by locality, relations, names. He changed from “JB” to “AB” in the clubhouse, but “AB” still did the same things “JB” did. His Joey Belle card became a collector’s item, but the man in the picture card still looked back from the mirror and saw the same interior world behind the face.

If I remember correctly, Joey changed to Albert because he wanted a clean break from his past. Others change for religious reasons (Lew Alcindor, Cassius Clay, Chris Jackson). Chad is probably just trying to be cute. But whatever the motive or desired outcome, name changing, while dramatic to the parents, is mostly superficial and cosmetic when it comes to the man/woman inside. It distances me from my family of origin by perhaps offending them, but I still carry the internal etchings of my family history wherever I go.

I can change spouses. I can change physical addresses. I can change who I hang around. I can even change my name. But I’m stuck with myself. Changing that part of me can’t be orchestrated by a publicist or a lawyer or a realtor. The inner person demands soul surgery, takes much harder work, produces something substantive, noticeable, lasting.

So expect the new Mr. Ocho Cinco to strangely resemble the old Mr. Johnson both on and off the field, for better or worse. And before judging him one way or another, consider both the coolness of having a new name and the overwhelming difficulty of genuine personal change.

Editorial