Naming & Personhood

I have two authentic names or orthonyms. 

1. tree turtle.
2. Cleis Abeni.

Neither of my names is a pseudonym. 

Both are official, authentic, and equally important.

I am a Black American woman and a citizen of the United States. 

I use Cleis Abeni for most business relations involving my published writing and my professional editing. For the last twenty-five-plus years, Cleis Abeni has been the byline for most of my written publications.  

When  I traveled to the city of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ in Nigeria in 1996 to do mediations and outreach on behalf of an organization dedicated to ending violence against women and LGBTQ people called Genders Within, one of the women called me "Abeni." "Abeni" is Yoruba for  "we asked for her, and behold, she appeared." I honor this woman and that community's naming of me.

"Cleïs" is the name for the child of the ancient poet Sappho. "Cleisthenes" was an ancient Greek populist leader who helped usher in a profound period of democratic egalitarian prosperity in Athens. I fell in love with the name Cleis when I was a pre-adolescent and I would sign the "letters to God" in my personal diaries with the name Cleis.

Thus, Cleis Abeni brings together longtime resonances and multiplicities that have fueled my lifework. 

tree turtle (intentionally spelled lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence) is my legal name and my Buddhist ordination name. 

I am an Upāsikā, or a Buddhist who has taken novice and perpetual lay vows. 

• vrksaka duli or rukkha kurma is my name in the ancient language of Pali.
• เต่าต้นไม้ is my name in Thai language and writing.
• tèā t̂nmị̂ is my name in Thai phonetic translation.
• tao tunai is my name in simplified, transliterated Thai (meaning, how the Thai words sound when pronounced in English by non-Thai speaking people).

Given this complexity, I chose the English translation of my name when I legally changed it.

An Upāsikā (in a reformed Thervada, progressive, secular humanist tradition) pledges to adhere to the five precepts (pañcasīla), which are the following: 

1. Not harming others.
2. Not stealing.
3. Being open (and not misrepresenting).
4. Not mistreating others in terms of unwanted intimate relations.
5. Not abusing intoxicating substances. 

To learn about my Buddhist contemplative practice click here. 

To learn more about Buddhist understandings of animal spirit guides and plant symbolism click here and here.

Click here for more information on Buddhist styles related to title case and lowercase (search under the word "lowercase" in the glossary). 

Though it is not always the case, some ordained or lay ordained Buddhist cast key words in titles and names in lowercase. Lowercase sometimes signals lifelong humility.

My pronouns are she/her/ma'am.

I am a committed to the prosperity, equality, equity, and inclusion of Black peoples across the Diaspora; women of all kinds, creeds, and cultures; disabled people; people who struggle with income and economic insecurity; and people of diverse genders and sexualities. 

I am a lifelong peace advocate (since I was a child) and I am profoundly against war, abuse, harm, and violence of all kinds. 

Like Shulamith Firestone (1945-2012), the author of the 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (a book that I found inside a compartment in my biological mother's Singer sewing machine in 1976), I believe, as Firestone said in her book, that we  "have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the organization of nature." 

I am consciously benevolent, magnanimous, and compassionate.

At the same time, I am a tenacious nonviolent fighter with a sharply critical mind and voice.

Avoiding the trauma and violence of deadnaming, doxxing, and other forms of violent harassment is a part of the story of my names.