““Then what is your name?” [Robert] asked.
“My name is Not Sidney,” I said.
“Not is a part of Not Sidney’s name,” Maggie said
“Knot, with a k?” he asked.
“Not with a k,” I said.
“That’s what I said,” he said.
“N-O-T,” Maggie said.
“Sidney?”
“Not my name is not Sidney. My name is Not Sidney. Call me Not Sidney.’”
I Am Not Sidney Poitier, page 139-140
My name, “Kaila,” is a little unusual. Used once out of every 185 letters, the letter “K” is the fifth least used letter in the English language. My name also replaces the “y” in the common spelling of “Kayla” with an “i,” which tends to throw people off. Technically, my name is pronounced slightly differently than “Kayla” — my name is “kale-a” as opposed to “kay-la” — but honestly I usually can’t tell the difference. According to babynamescience.com, currently one out of every 9,059 babies born are named “Kaila,” making it a “very unique name.”
In Percival Everett’s poem, “Zulus,” he reiterates the importance of a name. First, he says the line, “Always name offspring,” twice, once in the stanza about F, referring to Frankenstein’s monster and the fact that it is unnamed as a way to dehumanize it. He states this line again in the stanza about N. By repeating this line to the reader, the speaker is able to emphasize this point to show that that naming one’s offspring is incredibly important.
Reading that line of the poem, I found it interesting how Everett proves the importance of naming one’s offspring in I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Not Sidney’s name leads to a lot of confusion and miscommunication in the novel. By naming him “Not Sidney Poitier,” the reader will inevitably want to compare him to the actor, even though Everett explicitly says to not do this, and Not Sidney tells the reader that his mother named him “Not Sidney” because she liked the character, not the actor. When being introduced to his peers, he always needs to explain that his name is Not Sidney, not that his name isn’t Sidney. On page 92, his college roommate tries to insult him by implying that he is not Sidney Poitier, but Not Sidney points out that in saying this he is only stating two facts — that his is Not Sidney Poitier, and he is not Sidney Poitier.
This miscommunication is similar to that of The Odyssey, when Odysseus and his men are tripped on Polyphemus’, the Cyclops, island. Odysseus tells Polyphemus that his name is Nobody, so when Odysseus drives a wooden stake into his eye, Polyphemus screams for help to the other cyclops by saying that “Nobody” is hurting him, none of the other cyclops come to his aid because they don’t think that he is in trouble.
These further emphasize the point that the speaker brings up in “Zulus.” Although both Not Sidney and Nobody are named, the negatives in their names lead to confusion. By having a name like “Not Sidney” or “Nobody,” this negates their identity to some extent. Although they are named, these characters are defined by what they are not. Because their names negate their identities, I don’t think that the speaker in “Zulus” would be satisfied with the way these characters are named.