Translated into English, my mother’s name means “joy”; my father’s, “handsome”; my sister’s, “mystery.” “Erin,” the name that my Turkish parents assigned me at birth, meant, at least as far as they knew, absolutely nothing. They tried to come up with something that would accommodate two cultures. To their credit, “Eren,” the Turkish word for “saint” and the traditional name from which the spelling of mine strayed, does correspond in sound and sense to “Aaron,” the American name that I have copped, for most of my life, from countless Jews and the prophet of God. But Erin, the peculiar compromise that adorns my birth certificate, sprang from the brain of my late father, an engineer who, years after immigrating to the States, mistook that entry as male in a book of baby names. His choice forfeited the Turkish thrill of Eren and the biblical pedigree of Aaron. Like many ill-fated hybrids attempting dual objectives—the spork, say, or two-in-one shampoo–conditioner—my birth name failed to perfect either. Any sane stranger would guess that Erin is an Irish girl.

– Changing Names, by Eren Orbey