My parents named me with completely different first, middle, and last names than I have now. Those names came with a heavy load of history. Among friends, I always had a series of changing nicknames which suited me better. My parents found themselves answering the phone and responding to calls for "Mud" or "Fang." Finally, when I was in high school, my best friend Linda Pace, who was supportively using "Tiger" at that time, tired of tomboy identities. She discovered the dancer Isadora Duncan, and decided that she would take the name Iris Moon, and I would be called Rose Moon. Then Linda and I took a trip up the California coast, and I fell in love with rivers, and my name became Rose Moonwater.
The middle name of Zadkine came later, just popped into my head and wouldn't let go, right around the time when I legally changed my name, at 19. A few years after that, I was walking down the street in Paris, France, and saw a billboard splashed with big, bold "Zadkine," and images of primitive figures. Ossip Zadkine, a Russian-born French sculptor's work was being shown. That gave me a thrill, and I wondered if I was a relation, or kindred spirit, bearing his name.
It took my family about 10 years to catch up and feel comfortable using the name Rose, which my friends adopted immediately. I hadn't known why I changed my name, only felt the necessity. That wasn't something I understood until reflecting back, years later. Anyway, Iris went back to Linda, but I thank her dearly for seeing enough of who I was to give me a name I could embody for the rest of my life.
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