My name is Matilda. And it’s a great conversation starter.
Typically, I offer my name to a narrow slice of people: nurses, bank employees, TSA agents, etc. Those people who sit behind desks and require formal identification. “Name?” they ask in a monotone voice. But when I provide it––Matilda Peck––their eyes light up. They smile with recognition. Maybe this is what celebrities experience, with a name already known and loved.
“Have you read the book Matilda?” the administer asks. “Have you seen the movie?” It’s their favorite. When I was younger, I was bored by this routine conversation. But now, I’m grateful for the touchstone. Especially because that Matilda, the one in reference, these is a superhero.
Matilda Wormwood is the protagonist in Roald Dahl’s bestselling 1988 novel, which was adapted to film in 1996. She is an exceptionally bright young girl, with burgeoning psychokinetic powers. A precocious reader, Matilda frequents the public library to escape her negligent family. After entering school, Matilda quickly excels and befriends her teacher, Miss Honey, who grows into a parental figure. Meanwhile, the school’s headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, is terrorizing students with excessive and strangely creative punishments. Seeking to avenge Trunchbull’s victims, Matilda uses her telekinesis to pose as a ghost and haunt the principle. Trunchbull runs away, never to be seen again, and Matilda and Miss Honey find their happy ending amidst books and learning.
Intelligent, courageous, kind, and with supernatural capacity, Matilda Wormwood is truly extraordinary. She has done a great service to all the Matildas of the world; giving us association with brilliance and bravery. I am lucky to share my name with her. In more casual introductions, I’ve even started referencing her, just to get on someone’s good side: “Hi my name’s Matilda, and I can move things with my mind.” This always gets a laugh. And luckily, no one asks me to prove it.
Contrary to popular assumption, however, I was not named for Roald Dahl’s character. I was named after my grandmother. Matilda was my father’s mother, and she died many years before I was born. Sometimes, she feels as fictional and far-away as Matilda Wormwood. But I imagine she was just as extraordinary.
My name is also Tilly. Which is not a conversation starter. What kind of name is that? I imagine my acquaintance wondering. “It’s short for Matilda,” I sometimes add. As if I need to justify it.
Tilly is the name I chose for myself when I was ten. There were many reasons for this choice, most of them private, some painful. For now, I’ll just say that ten was a challenging age. After nine years of just being kids, the world suddenly divided us into boys and girls. Or rather, started giving weight to those previously flimsy titles. Started applying them like heavy makeup.
Being a kid––when you can be everything and become anything––was very different from being a girl. Being a girl came with rules, expectations, and scary bleeding vaginas. It meant being polite and agreeable, and having to wear a dress for Picture Day. At ten, I could see the forked road ahead: One path led towards glorious manhood, the other led somewhere hushed and narrow, like the tampon aisle. And I did not want to go to that tampon aisle. So, I buried any femininity under baggy shorts and big tee-shirts. “Olive drab,” was how my mom described my style. On the brink of adolescence, dressing like my brothers felt like the safest option. Being a boy gave me time to figure out how to be a girl.
While dragging my feet on the doomed path towards tampons, I felt everything else spinning out of control. In school, I was painfully shy (maybe if I was a boy, they would have called me “reserved”), and I was always falling behind. Everything we learned felt stifling, as if it were designed to make me confused and miserable. Spelling games and math fractions and random history lessons washed over me in thick, nonsensical stew. Fourth grade was the climax of elementary school: stuff was hard, but nothing had meaning yet. I remember sitting in class and feeling a dull panic. Like I’d never get a grip.
That year was a series of awkward steps towards who I was becoming. And the biggest one, of course, was becoming Tilly. While many things didn’t fit––being a girl, being a student, being in fourth grade––that name did. Tilly fit perfectly. Scraping together any self-assurance I had left, I pulled the name over my chest like armor.
In truth, I’ve always loved the name Matilda. I just haven’t figured out how to wear it. Which sounds silly, of course, because I’ve been Matilda since birth. But while Matilda is this big, worldly thing I was born into, Tilly is what I built from scratch. It was the first thing I really claimed for my own.
Wearing Tilly on my chest for over a decade, I’ve carried Matilda in my pocket. I only pull the name out for formal introductions, identity verification, and paperwork. Recently though, I’ve felt curious about it. I wanted to try Matilda on for size.
I decided to go by Matilda at work this summer, casually as well as formally. The full name experience. It was bizarre to hear my colleagues integrate “Matilda” into their everyday vernacular. They did it so easily, like the name weighed nothing. In meetings, they addressed me without any hesitation, as if Matilda were a name, and not a conversation topic.
Maybe none of this makes sense. Maybe it’s far too much reflection on a name––something typically left unquestioned. But here we are. And I want to leave you with one final thought: the meaning of my name.
Matilda, also spelled Mathilda and Mathilde, is the English form of the Germanic name Mahthildis, which loosely translates into “strength” and “might.” This translation has always resonated me, even when the name itself feels big and strange. As a small person, who tends to be passive and self-sacrificing, strong is the welcomed antithesis to what I appear to be. Mighty is what people don’t expect. And when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed––when that dull panic of fourth grade returns––I think about Matilda, and how I am named to overcome adversity.
This is how I see it now: Tilly is the person I’ve built. Matilda is the builder.
Quiet Histories 