What's in a name?

Since coming to Chile about a year and a half ago, my name has been the source of endless grief. I brace myself for every introduction, prepping my memorized summary of how to say and spell it with as little confusion as possible. Almost everyone forgets by the second time we meet. And the reason is simple.

My name is Joe. Pronounced with a hard English "J" followed by an "oh."

Joe= J-oh.

In Spanish, "J-oh" is written as "Yo," which translates to "I." So every time I introduce myself, I say "yo soy Joe," which sounds indentical to "Yo soy yo" or "I am I." They look at me, eyebrows furrowed, mouth turned up, and I read their expressions as "yeah, and who the hell isn't?"

I understand their confusion.

For a while, I sought solace in the Bible. When God manifested Himself in a burning bush, Moses asked Him who He was. God's answer, "I am who I am." Sound similar?

My train of thought: "Yo soy yo," becomes "I am I," becomes "I am who I am."

Conclusion 1: my name echoes God's, and thus my, claim to divinity.

But still, I wanted to help people pronounce my name correctly, so I broke it down to its most fundamental components. Really, Joe sounds like "Jow." There's that sneaky blended vowel at the end  of my name that blunts the abruptness of the "Jo." It's been a while since I've taken math, but here was my basic arithmetic:

English          Spanish
J             =     Y
O            =     O
W            =     U

My name, written phoentetically in Spanish, is "You." "Yo soy You" or "I am You."

Conclusion 2: my name is simply recognizing that you and I are not only equal but synonymous.

Yes, I am smiling while I write this. Who knew that "Joe," a name that is used to embody mediocrity and the common man could actually be one of the most profound existential statements about the divinity you and I share?

Average Joe
Morning Joe
Joe the Plumber, no more!

I am Joe
Yo soy Joe
Yo soy yo
I am I
I am You

My given name may be "Joe," but underneath the name, I think all of us are just "Joes" trying to identify and distinguish what is truly an essential and shared existence of Joe-ness.

The only other alternative is that all of this is purely coincidental. But as Sherlock Holmes once said, "there is no such thing as coincidences." And isn't he also, underneath his intellect and fictional existence, just another "Joe"?

Aren't you?