Particle Physics: VSI
November 4th, 2006 Filed Under books, science
Stumble it!my name change
November 3rd, 2006 Filed Under personal
In August 2006, I legally changed my name to ‘Saul Pwanson’. My birth name was, as you might have guessed, ‘Paul Swanson’. There are many Pauls in the world, and we’re all named after the first Paul, St. Paul who founded the Christian religion, nee Saul from Tarsus who enjoyed persecuting the original Jews for Jesus. One day, while on the road to Damascus, Saul was blinded by a bright light in the sky that told him Jesus was the real deal, and so he converted, spending the remainder of his life as the very first and very effective Christian evangelist. Without Paul, Christianity would have remained a small sect of Judaism.
The surname ‘Swanson’, as you would correctly presume, is Swedish, though of course no one knows for sure where exactly we came from. In Swedish, apparently “swan” means “serf”, so any Swanson is really just a peasant Swede, anti-royalty if you will. There are so many Swansons that my great-grandfather, a Swanson, married a woman, also a Swanson, and they weren’t even remotely related, or so I’m told. My family can’t trace its history back to the immigation boat, let alone a plot of land in Sweden (which probably would’ve been owned by somebody else anyway).
So the combination of Paul and Swanson is not that uncommon in this Christian immigrant nation. There are several Pauls Swanson in every city, including at least one patent attorney in Seattle (where I live), who even shares my middle initial. One Paul wrote a book on Microcomputer Disk Techniques, which was a little beyond my nascent programming skills at the time. Not one of the Pauls is famous enough to warrant a Wikipedia entry, however.
As an adult, I woke up and renounced the faiths I took from my parents. Recently, some current political events have made me increasingly frustrated with Christianity, but I gradually realized that my loathing is not for the rank and file of modern-day Christian-Americans, who are by and large good people, but for Christian evangelism and rigid dogma. The emotionally manipulative, brutally persistent hawking of spiritual wares and restricted thought, initiated by that first Christian, Saint Paul of Tarsus. St. Paul, though he may have meant well, created a monster that afflicts the world even today.
So I changed my name, ‘back’ to Saul, in a small effort to undo some part of the two thousand years of Christian hegemony instigated by St. Paul. I have not converted to Judaism, nor to anti-Christianity, nor even to any religion that has a name. I have adopted a set of superstitions unique to me, and I promise not to start any wars with the inevitable faithless nation.
One of my superstitions involves the Law of Conservation of Letters, which of course would apply to name changes. Luckily my last name had an S to spare; a slight prestidigitation and my correct name became Saul Pwanson. A fine name, even if it is a little irregular; and I was happy to find that the domain name was still available.
