Wendy Smith

Our names are at once the most public and the most personal things about us. I discovered this when as a teacher of adults, and later a manager of small teams, I would begin the first class or meeting with an icebreaker about names. The invitation was to say your name and share as much or little about it as you want. The aim was to help us get to know each other and remember names. People would talk about the meaning of their name or names, who had given them the name and why, how they felt about it, whether they had a nickname or who they were related to. The stories were rich with meaning and really did break the ice.

A slight variation on this approach was to ask people to introduce themselves with a word that described them that started with the first letter of their first name. I realised that this could be very powerful when years later, I was out and about and a woman approached me. She said hey wise Wendy. Its very Viviane from TAFE. After I had recognised her she said Guess what? Sporty Steve and Daring Dannielle are married with kids. Have a think about your own name and the story you would tell.

My story is that my mother was named Ruby Gwendoline as was her mother and her mother’s mother. When I was born 62 years ago, Ruby Gwendoline seemed an old-fashioned name. My father suggested Wendy as that was his nickname for my mother. I am not sure where my second name Louise came from. I must ask mum. 

I love that my dad chose my name but I would have preferred to have been called Louise. The comedian Wendy Harmer summed it up best when she said Wendy! What sort of a name is that? It’s a little girl who gets left behind to look after the picnic and Timmy the dog when the others go off on an adventure. 

The name first appeared in 1904 in the story of Peter Pan. Next door to the author, J.M.Barrie, lived a little girl who couldn’t pronounce her Rs and told him she was his little fwendy. That Wendy was portrayed as a girl who was the mother figure to the lost boys. A little like being left behind with the picnic.

I was married for the first time at 18 and took on my husband’s surname which was Drury. We divorced and I married again at 25. I took his name – Smith –  because it was so simple and would make life easy. How wrong could I be. When I was having my son there were 16 Wendy Smiths registered at the little bush nursing hospital. Happily, and as far as I know, there were no mix ups. Any Facebook group I join has at least one other Wendy Smith and at some stage we have to distinguish ourselves from each other. 

Where it became most problematic was when I was at university as a mature age student. My Honours thesis supervisor’s decades long marriage had broken down and her marriage counsellor was called Wendy Smith. She would often mix us up. I would ring her up and she would launch into tirade against her ex-husband along the lines of Do you know what that bastard said last night. I would have to remind her that I was the other Wendy Smith and had called to chat about chapter two. As the year went on, she was unravelling and wasn’t distinguishing between us at all. The name Wendy Smith set off a Pavlovian reaction to spew forth hatred and bitterness. I did badly on my thesis when I had been a top student. I explained to the course coordinator what had been going on, and a rule was introduced that post grad students had to have two supervisors. 

A few years later I enrolled to do my Masters at a different university. Yes, there was another Wendy Smith. She was a PhD student and we both had the same supervisor. I would turn up for supervision and Anne wouldn’t be there. The other Wendy Smith had called the office to cancel her appointment and they cancelled mine. This happened on several occasions till I started ringing ahead. I wonder when I will come across another Wendy Smith who will disrupt my life again.

Copyright Wendy Smith, September 2024. All rights reserved; this intellectual property belongs solely to Wendy Smith.