Mostly True Memoirs
A WOMAN NAMED HUMBLE
Many of my English students adopt English names.
It’s not just for my class, it is for their entire business and professional identity.
In one particular corner of the world, the entire population seems to have perused the same outdated baby-naming book.
I have a lot of 30-year-old Herberts and Mildreds as students.
Some of them, however, choose random words for their names.
Today I had a woman named Humble in my class.
She probably saw a list of other virtue names such as Faith or Grace or Hope and assumed that Humble would work too.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that a humble person would never call herself humble.
Only a braggart would do that.
If she had asked for my opinion before she chose her name, I would have told her.
At this point, it’s none of my business.
I carried on with the class.
But I cringed whenever I said her name.
