Is Cyan my real name?
I get this question often. No, seriously, I do! People even write me emails that say my name in quotes like this:
“Cyan”, when should we set up a meeting?
The funny thing is that this trend predates Zivity by 10 years. It actually began when I started to get serious about tech/computers. Everyone thought it was my handle and that my name was really secretly something else. People would go so far as to try to guess my real name and insisted this name I liked to call myself was not real.
Well, it is! I was born with it. For rizzy.
In my early years, having the name Cyan was a curse. I absolutely hated it. I sat around thinking of alternate names I could go by. I threw some of them against the wall to see if they would stick and nothing I ever wanted to be called did. My friends all liked variations of the name Cyan that were less flattering: cyanide, cyanotic, cyran, cy, cysi, cyano, cayenne, chane, etc. I hated it. Nobody knew how to say it or spell it. Nobody knew what it meant. The #1 question I would get upon meeting someone was, “Wow, what an unusual name, what does it mean?”
My life changed with default color background schemes on Sun computers and the popularity of the household color printer. Suddenly, everyone knows what Cyan means. Now, the most popular thing someone says when they meet me is, “Cyan, like the color?” or “Do you have a sister named Magenta?” Well, I do! Actually, that’s a lie, I don’t.
So how did I come about this name? Well, there are two different versions of the story. I don’t know which one is true, but I’ll let you decide which one is better.
Both of my parents are artists. My mother is a realist. She can paint and draw exactly what she sees. My father makes claims that she’s not very creative. Well, he’s right. My mother is very factual. She’s actually quite scientific about it all. She’s more into the science and mechanism of art than the actual art itself. I get my engineering part of my brain from her most likely. My mother walked away from the world of art when I was 13 to study and earn her second master’s degree in microbiology. She’s wicked smart. Scarily so.
My father sells himself short. He calls himself an artist jock, but doesn’t play up his intellectual side. He’s actually quite savvy. Now, as you can imagine from how much I played up my mother’s fact based and direct life, my father is incredibly creative. He daydreams and invents things. He’s always thinking of cool things to do or about stuff he can make. He’s constantly on the go and has so much energy. He creates art daily and it is all abstract, colorful and fun. He invents words and writes poems. Well, my Dad, he’s just adorable. I get my bounciness, social ability and creativity from him.
When I asked my mother how I came about this name, she responded, “Well, you were born blue. You were cyanotic, had your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck and you were suffocating. What else do you want to know?” Satisfied with this, I wanted to know about my middle name, which is Starr, to which she replied, “Your great great Aunt was Belle Starr, famous gun slinging horse thief outlaw – I wanted you to take the family name back after us being ashamed of it all of these years.” See, my family legally changed their last name to ditch the Starr stigma that is now very chic and cool.
Wow. I was blue! According to my mother, that wasn’t her first choice. She wanted to name me Thyme. (Thank goodness for the umbilical cord eh?!)
My father says that on the night I was born, he walked out to take a break in the parking lot of the hospital and looked up at the sky. In the sky there was a sparkling star. It twinkled in various shades of blue and looked Cyan to him. He knew I was related to the Starrs, so he decided that it was a sign and that I should be the Cyan Star(r).
I go back and forth between which one is my favorite story. Sometimes when I’m feeling soft and fuzzy, I lean towards my dad and if I’m feeling humorous and brainy, I lean towards my mother’s explaination. It is kind of neat to have two different stories and it makes me wish I had a few more to choose from.
Now I think my name is the best gift I’ve ever received besides my life itself. So, thanks to my parents for picking such a bad-ass name. I’m super proud of it.
