From 2012-13, I edited a column called Name Tags on issues and experiences related to names and naming in The Land Line, a Chicago quarterly—I am hoping to resuscitate this column eventually, maybe even soon, in a new form. At the time (and still), I had seen so many friends and partners move in and out of names, as artists, as trans people, as various public and private selves, and I was interested in learning about other people’s relationships to their names.

I was also chewing on the problem of my own name—and this problem, which is also opportunity, has become more of a dilemma now that my body’s in transit. My given name combines the common (Megan) with the unusual (Milks) and so I’ve had the experience of being called something both regular and strange much of my life. I’ve published under this name for more than fifteen years, but it has never seemed quite right—in some ways it has an “unauthorly” feel—it is quirky and clunky, a limerick’s false start. And yet it sticks in the mind, a certain advantage. I remember struggling through my first painful short stories in college and thinking to myself: Megan Milks is a funny name—why suffer so hard to write serious, Literary stories? Whether this was a form of nominal essentialism or a way of coaxing myself into queerer terrain, well, whatever.

This weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing Eli Oberman for the NYC Trans Oral History Project. Of the many experiences and insights he shared, an observation he made about dysphoria has stayed with me. He was talking about his relationship to music as a form of expression, and made the point that dysphoria doesn’t necessarily have to mean the feeling of being trapped in the wrong body or gender; it can account, too (or instead), for the feeling of being locked outside of language, of not having language to describe your experience. I am feeling this kind of dysphoria around my name right now. I feel unlanguageable. 😦 Not that “Megan” is the wrong name but that there is no right name to come into. People have been (at my direction) calling me different names; I have been introducing myself in all kinds of different ways; it is starting to really itch.

After many conversations with many friends over the past I don’t know how long, I have tried out and discarded the following names: Mason, Masen, Mazen, Madigan, Madegan, Zachary, Fred, Zig. Sig. Sigfried, M. Gay, Carroll, Question Mark Milks. I’m probably missing a few. Thank you, everyone, who has offered input and advice during this time.

What’s in a name? A rose is a rose is a – OR – Call anybody Paul and they get to be a Paul  (Gertrude Stein). For a semester, I tried on the solid letter M., but ultimately it felt too anonymous, too coy; the double M of M. Milks too thick. Also, Facebook would not let me have it—their name policies don’t allow for single initials. This is how I came to use “Maybe Milks” as my Facebook identity for a few months, until Facebook flagged me and asked for documentation I didn’t have. So I became M. E. Milks, for a time, though that did not reflect what I was going by either.

I still like Maybe as a marker, of both doubt and possibility. And I keep coming back to Henry as an option. Maybe.

DAVID: And who is Henry?
TRACY: I have never met anyone called Henry.
DAVID: So. Who is Henry?
TRACY: I don’t know. Henry is in the cinema, in movies people are called Henry.
DAVID: Which movie?
TRACY: I don’t know, all movies, any movie. They’re always called Henry.

I am currently reading the ARC of Writers Who Love Too Much, the forthcoming anthology of New Narrative writing edited by Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian, and just came upon this piece by Leslie Dick which is all about Henry, a name that shows up in this character Tracy’s dream.

I like that Henry links me to Henry James and thus marks a literary and nonfamilial heritage. Though I don’t think of him as so strong a literary influence as much as say Kathy Acker or Samuel Delany, Dodie Bellamy or Dennis Cooper, I have a deep appreciation for his work and feel an affinity for him as someone who wrote often about women, who dabbled in horror, who enjoyed the pleasures of cross-generational relationships, who has been read as both asexual and queer. My sentence structures are not nearly as complex and circuitous, my work rarely hinges on indirection and ambiguity; and no, I’m not claiming to be “The Master” (gag), but: I too write often about girls and women. I too dabble in horror. I too have a relationship with both asexuality and queerness. Henry! I’m you! You’re me! In part.

DAVID: So you were Henry, all the time.
TRACY: Henry is me, me as a child, not not-castrated, but not castrated either, and it’s me the powerful woman,…Henry is her and me—which isn’t that surprising, since on some level I identify with her.

I tried to get Facebook to allow me to use Megan/M. Henry Milks as a name but the slash wasn’t approved. It is difficult it seems to have an unstable identity. Facebook wants to stabilize it. I’ve capitulated; now going by M. Henry Milks on Facebook and in most professional contexts. The M stands for Maybe. It stands for M. “M. Henry” links me to Chicago, and to food; there is a popular brunch restaurant in Edgewater named M. Henry.

It also stands for Megan. While I have never felt I am “a Megan,” whatever that means, as I have tried out various alternatives, I’m appreciating its sounds and cadence more and more: especially when pronounced what I consider the American way—a short e, not the Irish e that bends into a long a. I like the hard g. I like the way the two syllables can be delivered as either spondee or trochee (yes, I’ve been teaching meter this week). Is this a form of grief? Maybe. I haven’t decided whether to kill it or not.

Ideally I’d use a string of names to reflect my divine multiplicity, like Maybe Megan Henry Carroll Magnes Upton Milks. Upton aka Uppie was my maternal gay great-great-uncle; Magnes riffs on my grandmother’s name Agnes; Carroll’s a version of my mother’s middle name. Hashtag matriarchy. Hashtag nonbinary.

This is all to say that you can call me any of the following: M. Henry, M., Henry, Megan, Megan Henry, Henry Megan, Maybe Henry, Maybe Megan, Maybe, just Maybe. For now.