#disyllabic

 Yīng    yǔ

 Tài      tai

One thing that I've done since moving to New York is change my name -- sort of.

The friends who knew me from before still call me by my Boston-era nickname, which is one syllable -- like a Bob, a Sam, a Dan...

But back when I was younger, it was two syllables -- like Bobby, Sammy, Danny. Very few people call me this name nowadays; mainly just family and a couple friends I grew up with.

A few years ago, I realized that almost all of the people I knew called me by my monosyllabic nickname ("MSN") because they were introduced to me by someone else who at the time only knew me as MSN. I was never the one volunteering my own name, and I just went along with it out of laziness. It's not that I have a preference -- but it started to alarm me how rarely I actually said my own name out loud when I was being introduced to people.

So I thought of doing this experiment where I would begin introducing myself to people using my disyllabic nickname ("MSNny"). From that point on, if someone called me MSNny, it would signal to me that I -- not a third party -- had made the introduction. In theory, if I started to hear more people address me as MSNny, it would mean that I was introducing myself more assertively and more frequently.

And then, just as I was ready to roll out this master plan, I realized the crucial flaw: I generally don't meet new people because I spend all my time holed up in lonely havens...

But that was then -- we're now talking a new city, new circumstances, new mandate.

Today I spent the afternoon with some friends whom I met last week in Brooklyn. They're all a little younger than I am. I haven't told them about this blog, but I'm starting to open up to them.