Hello, my name is Oscar

Translation¹

What is in a name? I received mine as an inheritance: it was the name of my maternal grandfather, who had already died when I was born. From him I also carry the middle name, though let’s leave that for another time and focus now on forenames only. I don’t know if it ever weighed on me to be named after him; what it did give me was a sense of privilege. Firstly, it was given to me by my father, who like me was also the firstborn. And it was given to honor the memory of his father in law (I was born shortly after my parents had “regularized” their relationship through a civil marriage ceremony). I don’t remember what place my grandfather Oscar held in his family, but what I do know is that my grandfather was a pediatrician, and as my mother told me, also the center of family gatherings. Perhaps that’s why my grandmother played the role of “support,” to allow him to remain at the table while she did the real dirty work of cleaning up… or maybe simply because he was the breadwinner, and so she the housewife, both with clearly assigned roles. In any case, my grandfather had fulfilled the family mandate and risen socially: a “doctor” in a family of Italian immigrants, who had studied (and graduated) while working as a chemist in his own laboratory, which, by the way, burned down with him inside, leading to the skin cancer that decades later would prevent his daughters’ children, or even my own father, from meeting him.

But what is in a name? Why use it as the title of this blog when there are so many other people with the same name, and not only people? Perhaps it was the mentioned sense of privilege, or that I am the first of a large family (my parents had 6 together, 5 boys and a girl, the youngest, who I assumed meant the end of the search), or that the name was not so common during my childhood, and so I came to believe that its sound (osˈkaɾ) identified “me” only. The truth is that I already used it with my first blog (in Spanish although then along my surname), and I never considered another name or title for my (new version of this) blog².

But really, what is in a name? A blog is a written medium, and names are better fit for invocations (and evocations), for the voices that inhabit us and call on us, that allow us a certain stability (the name is always the same) amidst so many changes: I grew up and was educated in Argentina, traveled through many lands (and seas!) and lived in some, particularly Catalonia and southern Finland, which I consider as “my own,” as much as one who is always passing through can appropriate them. I studied Theology and Philosophy. Those studies, along with my early experiences and my interests in servers and programming (in addition to the offered salaries and many other things), led me to work in multiple types of organizations: religious, private, third sector, in technology or the humanities, and even in multinational corporations that are publicly traded. In all of them, I was always “Oscar,” regardless of status, purpose, function, or relationship, and in all of them I also learned that, despite their types and goals, their similarities as organizations were many more than their differences.

This blog is about all of these things: family, heritage, philosophy, theology, technology, travels, relationships, religions, organizations, and many others that intersect with them, expand or modify them, question or reaffirm them. In particular, it is about the proper names that run through them. I do not intend to leave the question about the name without trying an answer, but it will not be in a sentence that I can share right here, or that I even expect to answer among a number of texts that could become an essay. In fact, the question about the name(s) is itself a search, a search for myself and for the relationships with the people who name me, for whom “Oscar” has to do with my story, my narratives. That’s why I write this blog, these posts, to find them, the people, the voices, and also their names. I write to connect, to keep each other company, always in part, never fully, but companionship after all: if we read to know we are not alone³, I write in the hope that someone will confirm it.

Note on the use of AI in this blog

“I don’t write without artificial light”⁴, but I do write without AI. I have written each original text of this blog in the language indicated as such in each case. AI has been used to generate images (indicated in the credits or image caption), and in some cases, to correct or translate (also indicated in the entries or pages) versions that I reviewed myself before publishing. If attributing authorship was complicated before AI⁵, it will be up to the reader to decide or keep open the possibility of plagiarism or ownership.