Clare Henney: December 2012

I don’t know if it applies to everyone but to me there is a certain degree of distinction in terms of what role a person plays in my life based on what name that person uses for me. Almost everyone who knows me personally calls me by my nickname, Clare. My family, from what I can remember, has hardly called or referred to me by my real/given name – with the only exception being moments when my parents were really mad at me and wanted to emphasize that they mean it. You can usually tell who doesn’t really know me when they use my given name. The given name rule has its exceptions. My closest friends earn the right to call me by my given name. It’s a small group of people who get to do that and be labeled near and dear to me. It would feel incredibly weird if someone tried to use my given name in an attempt to act close to me considering that even my immediate family calls me by my nickname and I usually tell people to just call me Clare.