Melvin Kaminsky. Maurice Micklewhite. Frances Ethel Gumm. Reginald Dwight. Marion Morrison. Larry Zeigler. Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston.

None of these names may be familiar, but the people who possess them are easy to recognize. Melvin Kaminsky gave us "Blazing Saddles", "Spaceballs", and "Young Frankenstein". Maurice Micklewhite played Austin Powers’ father. Frances Ethel Gumm left Kansas to find a wizard and battle a wicked witch. Reginald Dwight is the Rocket Man hangin’ out with Bennie and the Jets. Marion Morrison was the Duke of the Wild West. Larry Zeigler does it live on CNN. And Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston enjoyed breakfast at Tiffany’s.

While the people behind these names decided to change to identities better suited for the public eye, others live day-by-day with unconventional names and the troubles that come along with them.

It’s an average day in the elevator at the Caltrans building in Sacramento. Employees are making their way up to different departments, ready to tackle whatever work may lie ahead of them. One person turns to another in the elevator and asks, “So, how’s that new Chinese guy you hired working out?”

The other person pauses a moment, then replies, “She’s not a man – she’s a woman, she’s blond, and she’s not Chinese.”

The new person they’re taking about is Gayman Wong, who works in the Budgeting Department at Caltrans.

“It has caused me lots of problems with people pronouncing it,” says Gayman about her own name. “And every single day that I go to the grocery store, or go to the bank, or go to Long’s, somebody asks me about my name every single day of my life. People’s eyebrows just shoot up and they want to know, ‘What kind of a name is that? Is that your real name? How did you get it? How do you spell it? What is it? Why don’t you change it?’”

Gayman’s image is not the first thing to come to mind when people hear or see her name. She’s of Pennsylvania Dutch and German descent, with blond hair, blue eyes and fair skin.

“The fact that my last name is Wong causes even more problems,” says Gayman. “Because when people see it, they can’t figure out if I’m a man or a woman, if I’m Chinese or what. And then they see me and it just blows them away.”

Gayman was originally born Gayman Ann Miller, but the origin of her name is unknown, not even her parents are entirely sure where it came from. Her mother wanted to name her Renee, but her father despised that name. So Gayman attributes her identity to her mother reading several French novels while she was pregnant and liking the word “gammon,” a loose meaning for “street urchin.” And thinking that it sounded French, Gayman was born.

While this story never seems to satisfy curious minds, Gayman sometimes makes up a simple explanation – she tells them it’s Welsh.

“I was born at a time when everyone’s name was Cheryl, Cathy, Nancy, and Susie,” says Gayman. “When I was little, we shortened my name to Gay and all my teachers, from the first day of grammar school until I graduated from high school, wanted to call me Gail. They wanted to call me anything, but they could not get Gay – they just couldn’t get it.”

Gayman believes that her name has given her more problems than she's aware of, especially by working in the business world. If she had a career in the arts or as a writer, perhaps the troubles with her name wouldn't be such an issue, since she's been told it's a good stage or pen name.

“I would plead with prospective parents to keep in mind that as their child becomes an adult, will ‘Fluffy Jones’ work?” says Gayman. “School, college, career – I beg of parents to think of all these things when naming their children.”
***
Gopal Jeremiah Hassin lives in Los Angeles and works as a legal videographer. His name is Sanskrit for a little rascal who steals butter.

"I lived in a small town in Connecticut that was pretty uniformly French Canadian and Polish," he says. "These people had no exposure to any kind of non-white culture. The fact that I was Jewish made waves."

For Gopal, most of his taunting occurred when he was a child in the form of “go” jokes, like “go potty.”

“Being the out of town son of hippies, I was already kind of an outsider, and the name was kind of the extension of that,” Gopal remembers. In his early teens he thought about changing it to something more “normal,” but as he grew older, he came to accept his name.

“Being Gopal is interesting…it’s better than being something that people have heard of a zillion times,” he says. “People always remember ‘Gopal.’ I hardly ever remember them, but they do remember me by my name, even though they make the same jokes over and over again.”

Now an adult, the “go” jokes still continue, but without the bathroom humor. “Go, Gopal, Go!” or “So you’re always cheering yourself on” or “I’m Go-Steve” are the recent comments he gets with his name. While it gets repetitive and somewhat annoying, he’s still content with who he is.

“I’ve grown into the identity that is Gopal, and I can’t think of any other name that I would want…I can’t think of any other name that I could be.”
***
"Lava lizards are approaching - blast them!" Paj Crank commands as his voice is recorded. Paj is a voice actor in North Hollywood and just finished recording his character as the Red Ranger for a new interactive Power Rangers helmet, which will allow kids to download and act out adventurous missions. As someone working in the entertainment industry, Paj found that his unusual name has become more of a blessing than a burden.

"It's kind of beneficial now because I'm in the business where you want people to remember your name."

Paj's full name is Fillmore Pajeau Crank III - a combination of last names connected to his family. His great-grandfather was named the Scottish surname Fillmore, after Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President of the United States. Pajeau comes from Charles Pajeau, a close friend of the Crank family and French inventor of the tinker toy. And Crank was shortened from a longer Dutch name, so it would sound Americanized. However, Paj's mother felt Fillmore sounded too old, and adopted his middle name as his first.

"Paj was an unusual name and no one really knew how to pronounce it," he says. "But Crank was actually the worst part of it…my name was constantly a source of people picking on me."

He remembers how kids would come with a variety of taunts, especially with the combination of Fillmore Crank. It wasn't until he went to college that his name became "cool" since it was so different from mainstream names. But while the drug innuendos ceased, he now is mistaken for someone he is not.

"If someone hears my name over the phone they think I'm Indian. And then they see me and it's this white kid with blond hair and blue eyes, and they're surprised," he laughs.

Despite the problems Paj has had with his name, he will never change it, out of respect for his family. In fact, Paj promised at his grandfather’s funeral that if he has a son, he will carry on the lineage, and there will be a Fillmore Pajeau Crank IV.