Any other name

How being a custodian of the name Freya has shaped my life.

Of course, the last seat at the long Sunday roast table was next to a baby. I squeezed in, squeeze-waved at friends and squeezed the hands of anyone unfamiliar, including said baby.

“This is baby Freya!” said the mother.

“Oh, a new one. Welcome. My name’s Freya too.”

“Beautiful! I’ve always loved the name.”

“Me too, ever since I could write it.” I turned back to the baby saying in a higher octave, “Do you know, people are going to be asking how to spell your name for your whole life? Yes they are! You’ll hear every wrong pronunciation, Free-a, Friar, Fran… I know. But pride yourself on never becoming bitter or impatient, ok? And don’t worry, I’m doing the work with baristas now so it’s not as hard for you when you grow up. No fake names for coffee collection.” I blow a raspberry.

“Oh, we didn’t really think of that,” says the Mother of Frey.

I nearly blow another raspberry, as this is a little reckless to me. It’s understandable that parents have varied and personal reasons for choosing a baby name, but isn’t it expected to scrutinise the spelling and consider the experience of the lifetime speller?

“Coffee for Frieda?”

“Yes you’re on quite the journey with this name,” I pivoted. “People will often tell you when they know another Freya - their niece, their cousin, their cat. So it’s quite the conversation starter. Now, men… well, unfortunately that’s not as good news, depending on how much time you plan on spending with them I suppose.”

The baby dribbles.

“In my experience,” I continued, “there is a particular cohort of nerdy men that the name attracts, and who upon hearing it will blink slowly, stroke their jawline fuzz, inhale through nasal passages that sound like they’re lined with shredded cheese, and begin to tell you all the viking god history they know surrounding the name, like you didn’t:

• read all about it as soon as you knew what a library was,

• receive every children’s book with Freya in the title that made it to Melbourne suburban bookshelves,

• or try the Freya whisky in Norway surrounded by perky-breasted, bronze, souvenir statues with Freya plaques at the bottom (and throw it up later).”

“Coffee for Faye!”

Dear reader, this next fact I didn’t pass on to the motherbaby duo, but in Norse mythology Freya is known as the goddess of love and fertility. Apart from for the salivating, neck-bearded aforementioned, this isn’t much of a conversational aphrodisiac, though it did work with an American businessman once who unflinchingly responded to my self-introduction with “Well, you are quite the goddess.” (I was in LA so lent in to the cringe. And interestingly, now that I’ve tasted the fruit of the earnest flirting tree I can’t find my way back to the negging banter bushes. I digress…) Along my journey I also discovered that the Orion’s Belt constellation was once called Freya’s girdle, and even Friday came from the “day of Freyja.” You’re welcome.

Speaking of taking credit, I always say “thank you” when people compliment my name but of course I’ve merely been entrusted with it by my parents. Marlene and Maxwell Magee (whose names makes monogram gift sets economical) didn’t continue their own Mardashian theme, but perhaps that’s for the best. Mum said Mikaela was on the table, but say “Mikaela Magee” five times fast and you’ll see why it ended up off. Disappointingly they placed the most basic, middle-road, middle name filling into this artisanal Freya Magee sandwich: Rachel. Not even after anybody old! Alane was also an option, but Seinfeld had come out and it was too similar to Elaine which my mother hated. Little did she know Rachel would become synonymous with another 90s sitcom, and mostly in the form of a haircut.

They landed on Freya after my mother saw the film The Year My Voice Broke, a coming of age story with a love interest named Freya Olsen. I’ve never seen it, but it must have been quite the flick to warrant convincing my father as I remember him revealing to me that the first time he heard Freya he thought it was “a shocking name!”

“Coffee for… Fairy?”

But I have always cherished it. I feel fortunate to have something unique, that often brings a smile to people’s faces. “I like that name” they say like they’ve caught a whiff of their favourite flower. And I identify with it - how it looks, how it sounds, how it is perceived. “Quite rare, isn’t it?” It tends to stand out, or it certainly did in the small town I grew up in, and with my flamboyant style and strong sense of self, so did I.

I didn’t know all of this so consciously until I forgot my name tag one day at my teenage fast food job. Borrowing one that read ‘Talia’ made me feel physically ill while serving customers, especially if their eyes ever glanced down. The plastic tag felt like a molten hot badge of lies. I didn’t mind the name Talia, but I WAS NOT A TALIA. ‘Magee’ I was less attached to with its odd, silly sounds, but I discovered how attached my friends were when I told them how I would jump to swap it for something more sophisticated. In reality I am not a sophisticated person, so perhaps it’s exactly where it belongs.

“Coffee for Fleur!”

My distinctive name also seemed to perfectly synchronise with the sense of independence and protagonism produced by being an only child. I have naturally felt an always-aloneness, and solidifed this view of myself when discovering my introverted and daydreaming Myers Briggs’ personality type, as well as my avoidant attachment style. But mostly, with all this singularity, I thought that I was special and destined for something bigger. You could say Freya was exemplified by my moving to London and pursuing creative arts, or you could say it was the stake in the ground from the beginning.

There’s actually a term for this. Nominative determinism is the hypothesis that people are more likely to follow careers that are connected to their names. I just came across two while reading The Modern House by Matt Gibberd where he mentions countryside restorer Charles Flower and environmentalist Isabella Tree. It was first theorised in 1994 in New Scientist Magazine with the authors' explanation centring on the phenomenon of implicit egotism. This means that most people think positively about themselves and prefer things that are connected to the self, such as the letters in one's name. Earlier than this, Karl Jung wrote in his 1952 book, Synchronicity, that there was a “sometimes quite grotesque coincidence between a man’s name and his peculiarities”.

“Coffee for Fiona!”

Well, I’m not a seamstress, but with a name like Freya I am of course a creative, skirting the industries of design, writing, theatre and music, and funnily enough, I spend some of my time naming companies. I love to name things. To chisel prefixes and suffixes into something that sounds pleasurable to say and hear. I always name my plants (which makes it sadder when they inevitably die) and I look forward to the day I’ll get to name a dog or two. Children? Not for me. (See my first Substack post Not suitable for children.) But if it were to occur, with such fondness for my own name, I think I would perhaps have to pull a Lorelai Gilmore and call them Freya. Or Frey for a more masculine version. How’s that for positive association with oneself?

While I don’t fully believe that names determine your career path, they certainly hold power, shape your perspective of yourself, and can spark real connections and events. Just last month one of my Instagram followers, a Magee, reached out saying he had only found me because of our shared surname, but had related with some vulnerable content I had made. I’ve been confused for comedian Freya McGhee (I am that funny) and subsequently went to see her perform at Edinburgh Fringe. And once I went on a weekend adventure with someone because I kept receiving office emails intended for them. I had eventually rung saying, “Hello, it’s me, the other Freya. I’ll be visiting the Sydney office soon so will have to say hi.” Instead she took me to lunch, and invited me to a wine festival that weekend, not before showing me her stunning waterfront apartment complete with a hot graphic designer boyfriend painting landscapes in the sunroom, and a ragdoll cat named Sapphire. I said to myself, “I think I want to be this Freya when I grow up.” We even bonded over how we both thought we were exceptional growing up, marked for something significant.

“Coffee for… ah… small oat latte?”

I used to feel a jab to my uniqueness whenever meeting another Freya, but have softened my sense of significance. I’ve now met plenty of other Freyas, befriended some of them, listened to singers like Freya Ridings, watched actors like Freya Allan, bought Freya branded clothing and lingerie (there’s a satisfaction in the lace-tucked tags all reading Freya), been given a book by author Freya North (which was curiously offered to a friend from an Uber driver’s trunk while he was on his way over to see me) and over the years watched peoples’ reactions to my name change from confused or delighted to unmoved. I’m no longer the only Freya, not even the only Freya Magee, but I am the only one of me there is and ever will be, so happy with that.

“Bye, baby Frey! Take care of those five letters, now. Oh and I’ll share a little game with your mum that she can teach you one day, called Find the Frey. Whenever you’re seeing a film, you need to watch the credits until you see a Freya. There will always be at least one. It just seems to be a name that creative people name their inevitably creative children. By the way, what do you do, Ms Fielding?”

“I’m a florist!”