In the land of Teerakmurai (tea-rack-mirror-eye, "mirror" pronounced quickly as a single syllable, accents on tea and mirror), once lived a girl who had accumulated, by the end of her life, more names than she could remember. Truthfully, she just didn't keep score, and the Board is not inclined to chase down the official records. But the number of her names was more than one can count on one hand, or even on two. The number was extraordinarily high by any standard, so much so that some members of the Board have referred to her as the Girl of A Thousand Names (probably an exaggeration), or for short, Polyname.
In Teerakmurai, names are handed out somewhat like titles in the West, to address the uneasiness that adults feel with their station in life from time to time. In the West, a person might endeavor to change her title from "chief bottle washer" to "understudy to the Nubian princess" or such like, with the expectation that the change in title will be accompanied by corresponding changes in career responsibilities. But in Teerakmurai, names are changed by the naming authority upon request without any change in worldly responsibilities. A certificate is issued, listing the old name and the new, the new name is added to the register, and life goes on.
The certified name is used primarily for official purposes, and the person retains an informal name for daily use, usually assigned by the parents shortly after birth. The Terakmuraiians believe that the spirits that influence the destinies of the living will take notice of the official name, because it is the name chanted by the monks during supplications at the temples, the name spoken to the soothsayers while possessed by these spirits, the name written on prayer sheets and burned with incense. And not least of all, the name by which one is known to the King. Not personally for most subjects, of course, but to the minions and mandarins of his regime attending the business and ceremonies of state. So it is widely believed that the official name taken bears heavily on one's fortunes and destiny. In comparison the informal name is unknown and unused except in social intercourse with one's circle of family, friends, neighbors and so forth.
Polyname accumulated a great train of official names, because of a great train of disappointments and dashed hopes beginning in young adulthood. Each new name was sought out, adopted and certified as each old name failed to produce the desired change in circumstances. But from her incarnation she was known by her informal name of Smudge, or in the more literal translation "little dirt."
Smudge was born as the second and unplanned daughter to a young landless family at the lowest rung of the social order. She was born about six weeks early to boot, a frail and tiny thing scarcely larger than a kilo bag of rice. Yet another daughter, and particularly one in frail condition, was not a burden her father felt willing to bear. In dramatic demonstration of his painful state of emotional affairs, he suddenly hurled her a second-story window one day not long after her birth, and she fell to the ground below. Miraculously, or perhaps just luckily, she was unhurt. It was the time of rains, so the ground was muddy, and the softness of the mud cushioned her fall. Her grandmother found her covered in mud and wailing as loudly as a frail infant can, her mother having fainted dead away from the shock of witnessing her husband's unfathomable act of violence against the helpless infant. Smudge's father had been well drunk with rice wine taken from the family's commercial stock, and fled in shame and rage from the scene.
The fall to the mud happened before Polyname had received her first name. Plucked from the mud, she was cleansed by rinsing in rainwater from the family cistern, three times. Her mother and grandmother carefully inspected her front and back, limbs and digits, and found no harm. Not even a bruise could be found. From then on she was called Smudge, in acknowledgement of the dirt cleaned from her that day, and to ward off any envious spirits. Even then, she was notably beautiful, in an infantile way. And after surviving the fall unharmed, she was known to be extraordinarily lucky, too. Such attributes attract envy, it was feared. Not that Smudge ever received any material things that would provoke much envy, as it turned out.
But she did receive a gift of a non-material nature. The story of Smudge's gift, and the chain of events that the unveiling of that gift set in motion, will be the subject of another post, or several.
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