The Name Wyman
I was told that my parents chose my name from the last name of a friend of my father’s. A Mister Wyman I never actually met. Early in life, it was just a name, like any other.
But here’s the thing: names don’t stay neutral. We live into them. We give them weight, color, and meaning through what we do. Over the years, I’ve grown to see “Wyman” as “Why, man?”—a constant reminder of the curiosity that drives me. Why not write 400 songs? Why not create new worlds, characters, and shows? Why not try?
Even though I never met the original Mister Wyman, I’ve built my own legacy into the name. What began as a borrowed surname has become my personal banner: a symbol of curiosity, creativity, and persistence.
Maybe that’s the way with names. We inherit them, but in the end, we’re the ones who make them truly ours.
#Stage32 #Creativity #WritingLife #Music #Brentango
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Nicely put! I feel that way, too. My Mum named me after the violet/pansy flowers that grow year-round. Otherwise she would've named me Nastaran which means "wild rose." Growing up in Canada almost everyone I met mispronounced Banafsheh (even other Iranians got it wrong lol calling me entirely different names like Shabnam ["dew"] or Shukufeh ["blossom"]) and many still do, but now I wear it with pride and even find myself gravitating towards purple things more often as a nod to it. The names for my characters I put a lot of thought into, sometimes it's by meaning (like Keziah because naming her Cinna for "cinnamon" didn't quite work) and other times by sound (like Yini since no matter what I wanted the same vowel sounds, and it was extremely lucky that's a real Chinese name lol). It's even better when characters have two canon names like many of them in Petal do lol
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Banafsheh Esmailzadeh, you have grown into your name. Apparently, your characters have done the same. The funny thing is that I do not give any real thought to the names of the characters I create. For my animated series What the Mack? I immediately knew the names of each character. Zero thought put into it and zero changes. Maybe it has something to do with creative synesthesia.