Reynaldo Ethan Glick, Shay ben Tzion.

Day 01 - Introduce Yourself

My name is Reynaldo Ethan Glick. My Hebrew name is Shay.

I have a Spanish first name because my mother was Latina, and my parents wanted to reflect that in at least part of my name. That three-fourths of my name are Jewish should give you an idea of how much they wanted to reflect my father’s side of the family versus my mother’s.

My first name starts with R and has a Y in it because my father’s side of the family has a tradition of naming their children with the same initial as their same-sex parent, and including a Y. It’s a way of passing down names through the family line, whether or not the surname changes.

My cousin Sonya and I had different last names, but our first names came from the same place. It was nice.

Ethan and Glick have always amused me. My parents chose Ethan because it has the same initial as my mother’s name and means “strong and optimistic.” It can also mean “enduring, permanent,” and it’s possible that I’m inhuman enough to be immortal.

It’s also the English version of my uncle’s Hebrew name- Eitan. That was completely accidental on my parents’ part; in Jewish tradition, it’s unlucky to name someone after a living person. My father didn’t learn my uncle’s Hebrew name until after my bris, and I’ve been told that his annoyance between having to decide between changing my name to better fit tradition and changing the name spoken at my bris was hilarious until it became annoying.

Glick means “lucky,” and I think that’s always been a cruel irony. “Glick” started with Jews being forced to take surnames when they had been using “son of” (I’m Shay ben Tzion), and was passed down to my father, who destroyed his life trying to do the right thing, and then me, whose life was destroyed by the vampire he became.

Lucky indeed.

“Shay” means “gift.” My mother was a vampire, and therefore infertile. She and my father had talked about ways of getting around that, but they were still a long way from deciding if and how they wanted a child. I was unplanned and shouldn’t have been possible.

The thought behind “gift” is pretty obvious. It’s not that simple, of course, but it’s a nice thought.

A name that transliterates to starting with S and having a Y (it can also transliterate to Shai, the Y was on purpose) was their way of connecting me to my aunt, grandmother, and a long series of great-grandmothers before them.

I used “I,” “me,” and “my” to describe those names. That’s not entirely true.

Reynaldo Glick was born in an inter-reality incident that connected a pregnant human with a vampire. He was born with vampire blood, which changed him over time and eventually killed him.

I don’t know when he died. I don’t know when I came into being.

I had a lot of reasons for keeping his name. It isn’t easy to choose a new name for yourself. Genuinely accepting that I was a different person was difficult (and still is sometimes), because I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t want distance myself from Reynaldo’s family and friends, because I still cared about them.

Besides, my mother and father kept their human names. It’s our newest family tradition.