An Arlyn By Any Other Name

Project 365, Day 53

Have you ever met someone with your same name? With a first name like Arlyn, you might think I haven’t. Apart from my own family—I was named after my mother, who was named after her mother—I had never come across another Arlyn, let alone another Arlyn Hernandez.

As I understand it, my grandmother was born and not given a name immediately. One of twelve children, maybe by the time they got to her, they just couldn’t think of something, having used all the names they wanted. This is a story I just made up, and there is no truth to it. However, what I was actually told was that back in the 1920s/’30s, this was common practice, at least in Puerto Rico.

My maternal great grandfather was a seafarer, a captain, and as the story goes, he saw the name Arlyn printed on the side of a boat somewhere off the coast of France, possibly near the region of Normandie. He liked the name and well, now, by way of my grandmother, I, or rather, we were named after a boat.

I spent the majority of my younger years begrudging my uncommon name. Sitting in school with classmates named Brittany and Stephanie and Amanda and Jessica, I felt like an “other.” As phonetic as my name actually is (Are-lin), it tripped up every mouth it came out of, until corrected. Kids, of course, are embarrassed by the smallest of differences from those around them, so you can maybe imagine the disdain I had for my name. Most people would eventually just end up pronouncing it as Arlene, and I stopped correcting them after a while. If you met me prior to my college years, you know me as Arlyn, pronounced Are-lean. If you met me in college or after, you know me as Arlyn, pronounced Are-lin. The only difference was my level of confidence to correct and also my appreciation for a family name that was a bit unconventional.

This shift in name pronunciation is something I imagine as a big line down the center of my life. College was a time for reinvention, but for me, it was a chance to clean up my name. I would be Arlyn, not Arlene once and for all. There is no other Arlyn Hernandez (besides my mom) and I was going to own it.

So color me SHOCKED when I learned, on day 1 at the University of Florida, that this was not the case.

Before the first day of classes, I did the very mundane thing that every student going into a new grade did: I presented myself at the university’s bookstore to claim the textbooks I needed. During freshman orientation, we had been instructed to fill out a form with our name, our major, some basic contact information, and the course load for which we had signed up. We were told this would make collecting our textbooks much more streamlined. Essentially, they’d be waiting for us at the start of the semester.

So there I stood, in one of a handful of Aeropostale hoodies that would soon become my uniform, beaming with the eagerness that could only be matched by another freshman set free into the “adult” world. You didn’t need to look far to find one…my best friend and I were always glued to each other, cloaked in matching sweatshirts and beam-iality.

“Can I see your ID?” the more seasoned student on the other side of the counter asked. I handed over my newly minted student identification with pride. “I’ll be back in a sec. Let me grab those books for you.” I stepped aside, new college swagger in full force, and waited.

What occurred next was something I would have never guessed, no matter how many chances you gave me to do so. The bookstore attendant came back with two stacks of textbooks; one for my friend: books on grammar, AP Style, journalism ethics. My stack should have looked identical to hers, as we shared a major. But instead, a quick glance at the architecture-focused titles and I knew he had made a mistake. “These aren’t mine. I’m a journalism major, not an architecture major,” I said, convinced he was confused. “You’re Are-lean Hernandez, yeah?” he retorted as he slid my pre-filled orientation form over to me. “Actually, it’s Are-lin,” I said back to him, no longer listening.

I remember looking at that paper as if I had seen a ghost. I don’t understand, I thought. This is me, but it’s not me. To anyone who might have had a common name, the confusion might seem extreme. But remember, I had gone 18 years up until that point being “unique.” My eyes scanned the paper, trying to comprehend, trying to spot something that would tell me what was going on. Had I accidentally signed up for the school of architecture?

And then I saw it.

Name: Arlyn Hernandez | City: Miami, FL | Major: Architecture

Wait a dang minute. I’m from Orlando, FL, not Miami, FL, I thought. All at once, I realized: There’s ANOTHER ONE OF ME HERE. What are the chances that another Arlyn Hernandez, another freshman at that, would have found her way to the same university as me, in the same year? And the funny thing about our majors is that up until I decided to study journalism, I had wanted to be an architect. Could it be that my name doppelganger and I might have some things in common? Was it the name that, on paper, had made us so similar? Possibly?

I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t leave the bookstore that day a little bit deflated, but also immensely intrigued. Who was this girl? Facebook would become a “thing” a few months later, and one of the first things I did when my university was added was look up Arlyn Hernandez #2. But by then, I had already been armed with a little more information about her. The similarities would continue to present themselves.

That first year in college, I lived in apartment-style dorms on the outskirts of campus. They were the newest buildings, and the appeal to me was that I wouldn’t have to share a bathroom with a whole floor of other women. Each dorm suite was set up with a kitchen, a living room, four individual bedrooms approximately the size of a small jail cell complete with cinderblock walls, and two bathrooms, somehow as large as both bedrooms combined. Each building had a parking lot in front of it. Of course, there were fewer spots than there were people in the building, so sometimes, depending on the time of day, you’d have to go hunting for a spot near another building and walk.

Had it not been for this fact, I would have never come across the silver Ford Mustang that was parked in the lot by the building directly behind mine, across the large flat open field where college students regularly congregated to sunbathe, read, play frisbee and what have you. The Mustang’s license plate? It read Lyna13. This means nothing to you right now, but just hang on one sec. My mother’s nickname? That same mother who I was named after, who also shared the name Arlyn Hernandez? Lyna. Her favorite number, ever the iconoclast, that one? 13. The car my mother drove until she handed it off to my older brother? A silver Ford Mustang. I swear to you I am not making this up.

That Silver Ford Mustang-driving Lyna13 was of course the other Arlyn Hernandez. I put what little journalistic skill I had acquired to that point to work to find out that she did in fact live in my dorm complex. How? HOW?!? It’s like the two of us danced around each other, our backs turned to the other, only ever seeing each other’s shadows.

I never did meet the other Arlyn Hernandez, if you can believe it. I sometimes wonder if she knew of me in the same way I knew of her. Had she been shocked by a stack of journalism books while fetching her architecture books? Did she look me up the first chance she got after signing up for Facebook? Was her illusion of self-exclusivity shattered the way mine had been? There is, of course, a chance she had no idea I existed.

A few years into my professional career, the memory of my name likeness was far away in the rearview mirror of my life. I thought of AH2 occasionally, wondering why I had never bothered to seek her out, at least to say hi in an ironic way, but mostly, I didn’t think of her. Introducing myself every time I called up an interview subject for a story I was working on would reaffirm my once-held notion that I was unique in some way. “Arlyn…what a unique name!” the person on the other end of the line would typically say. I loved it. This was a 180 from my younger years where I dreamed of being lost in a sea of Ashleys and Laurens.

It wasn’t until I went on the hunt to acquire an eponymous domain that I was reminded of Arlyn Hernandez #2. Someone told me that I should build a portfolio website if I wanted to appear like a professional writer, so I diligently got to work. Arlyn Hernandez #2 was however one step ahead of Arlyn Hernandez #1. Arlynhernandez.com was taken. The website? A portfolio of graphic design and architecture work, a small “Miami, FL” emblazoned at the bottom left-hand corner of the webpage.

I occasionally check up on my name shadow by heading to the website, seeing what might have changed. In another twist of similar fates, she now markets herself as a “Designer. Artist. Dreamer. Maker.” She went on to start her own branding agency, where she directs the design direction for many fashion and lifestyle brands. Another little search led me to the fact that she also started her own furniture company. Me? I went on to head the brand marketing for, uh, a furniture company.

If I didn’t recognize her face from the many hours e-stalking her on Facebook all those years ago, with her dark, straight hair similar to mine but features different enough from my own, I’d think we were the same person. Or perhaps that one of us had stolen the other’s identity. But again, it makes me wonder…is there something in a name? Something in the letters that come together to spell out Arlyn Hernandez somehow formed our brains into seeing the world a certain way, needing similar things out of life, having parallel creative strengths? I often joke to Charles that if something were to ever happen to me, he’d at least have another me wandering the planet he could seek out. (He, by the way, does not find the same humor in that as I do.) Could it be that we are so similar (again, on paper) because we share a birth year, an education, and a name that so few others seem to have? The hot Florida sun baked similar skillsets into the two of us?

This is all likely a very big, funny coincidence, but every now and then, I do wonder…

Arlyn Hernandez, from Miami, FL, if you ever read this, please reach out and say hello. Until then, I’ll keep waiting for the moment where our shared name presents a little nuisance like an already-taken website domain, or email address, or Instagram handle (I beat her to that one!)…a little poke from life to let me know there’s nothing new under the sun. I’m one-of-a-kind, sure, we all are, but…maybe not as one-of-a-kind as we think.

See you tomorrow, friends.