When I was born, it was attempted that I be named Jennifer Laura Dinehart.  This was shifted, by typographical error, to Jennifer Laure Dinehart.   I pronounced that mistake as “lore” and kept it.  Before I was given this name on paper, when I was still floating in my mother’s womb, I was to be called either Adam or Moira.  I was not named Moira because late in my mother’s pregnancy she read On the Beach and could not bear to have me share a name with the last woman alive on earth from those pages.  I have always liked the sound of Moira.  The Moira that I would have been I imagine being much like myself with more of my mother to her: the dark fall of hair and her splendid eyes – my mother’s daughter if I had been hers alone.  As it is, I am more of my father’s, I think.  Adam has stayed with me as well, if only to myself, as my other/my male twin.

I was baptized in Church, and named Miriam at Temple.

 If I have carried names before these they are not in my memory.  During my childhood I was mostly “little Jenny Dinehart,” though I cannot ever recall introducing myself that way.  The use of my full name was reserved to cast fear and guilt, used by angry adults to show that they meant serious business:  “JENNIFER LAURA DINEHART!”  Hearing this now still causes some alarm in me.  To my cousins I was often Fur and sometimes, dreadfully, Niffer.

When I left my upstate New York home, I left Jenny as well.  I found myself Jennifer or Jen; a young woman suddenly struggling to defend and define herself.  The Lower East Side of New York was a unsparing teacher for me in this.  The friendships that were forged in those years, the times spent, and the stories that were lived, shaped me far more than I could have guessed at before or even during them.

As a fanciful teenager I flirted with many variations on my given name because I found it terribly mundane and common.  This grew to the point that I would not answer if I heard my name called on the street, in the often-correct assumption that it was another Jennifer being greeted.  The one time from those times that continues to hold some truth for me: Jennifer Mavity.  That name was perhaps whispered once too often in my near-dreaming ears.  It strays there some nights still.

In the late eighties I joined the SCA and became Brana Vegvis there.  Brana was more than I was and other things besides.  This may serve to explain certain subsequent failures.  Through her I met, fell in love with, and married the man who gave the next name I would carry, the surname of Abronson.

Our son tagged me his Crowmama.  This name gave rise to my online personae of Corva. “This one” being a natural surface’s (running water still pool night lake) reflection of my past and myself.  Corva has met true friends and shared them with me.

In my 30th year I find myself cut free, by my own hand, and spinning free.  I have both great loss and great love in my life.  The answer that comes to the question of “how’s things going” with me is some variation of “OUCH ouch ouch Ouch WOW Wow ouch ouch Wow.”  The balance is, and I hope will continue to do so, moving towards wonder and beauty.

Names are more than just labels.  They are powerful talismans and potent psychological masks.  At this point in my life, a crossroads in so many ways, I chose to find and to take my own name.

I felt I needed something that was descriptive without being flamboyant, a statement of self that I could wear without it being too extreme.