I\’m a man who has to introduce himself at least twice.
When your name is \”Doy,\” there\’s a good chance people are going to misunderstand the sound you\’re making with your mouth. \”Did you say \’Coy?\’\” \”Doyle?\” Or my favorite — \”Hi, Dwayne! Nice to meet you.\” That last one I\’ll just have to live with unless I\’m sure I\’ll see them more than once in my life.
After I\’ve repeated myself or, finally, sounded the word out phonetically — \”So, it\’s like \’Toy\’ but with a D instead of a T at the beginning\” — they\’ll inevitably ask where in the Sam Hill I got the name. It\’s a fair question, especially considering the fact that \”Doy\” is a cruel, multilingual joke.
In Spanish, it means \”I give.\” In Portuguese, it means \”pain.\” In Romanian, it means \”two,\” which absolutely delighted a three-year-old Romanian child I met in Brăila, who kept counting \”Un, DOY! Un, DOY…!\” pointing at me every time, and laughing hysterically as if it was the first time he\’d said it.
In Mandarin, \”Doy\” means \”bag,\” and in Vietnamese, \”ka-Doy\” is the name of the female sex organ. So there\’s that. I found that out, incidentally, from a college neighbor originally from Laos, who called me \”ka-Doy\” for the remainder of our college years.
According to Google translator, \”Doy\” means \”blessings\” in Bangla, and it means \”please\” in Gujarati, which I assume is spoken somewhere on this planet (possibly at Trekkie conventions?)
I got to Serbian before I abandoned this search, if you\’re wondering.
I relay all this useless information to acknowledge the fact that it\’s been some two years or more since I\’ve written here, and my neglect demands that I reintroduce myself.
I\’m Doy. Yes, that\’s my real name. And the story of my name is pretty boring as far as I know. My dad gave the name to me, his dad gave the name to him, and his dad gave the name to him.
I have no idea if they were teased as mercilessly in elementary school as I was.
At any rate, this is my little digital corner of the interwebs. Glad to have you here. I\’ll write about writing, books, and other stuff here whenever I get the itch.
In the meantime, please feel free to dig through the archives…but please don\’t call me \”ka-Doy.\”