Naming

I am an older Black American woman and a citizen of the United States of America. 

I have two authentic names or orthonyms. 

1. tree turtle.
2. Cleis Abeni.

Neither of my names is a pseudonym. 

Both are official, authentic, and equally important.

tree turtle (intentionally spelled lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence) is my legal name and my Buddhist ordination name. I am an Upāsikā, or a Buddhist who has taken novice and perpetual lay vows. 

• vrksaka duli or rukkha kurma is my name in the ancient language of Pali.
• เต่าต้นไม้ is my name in Thai language and writing.
• tèā t̂nmị̂ is my name in Thai phonetic translation.
• tao tunai is my name in simplified, transliterated Thai (meaning, how the Thai words sound when pronounced in English by non-Thai speaking people).

Given this complexity, I chose the English translation of my name when I legally changed it.

An Upāsikā (in a reformed Thervada, progressive, secular humanist tradition) pledges to adhere to the five precepts (pañcasīla), which are the following: 

1. Not harming others.
2. Not stealing.
3. Being open (and not misrepresenting).
4. Not mistreating others in terms of unwanted intimate relations.
5. Not abusing intoxicating substances. 

To learn about my Buddhist contemplative practice click here. 

To learn more about Buddhist understandings of animal spirit guides and plant symbolism click here and here.

Click here for more information on Buddhist styles related to title case and lowercase (search under the word "lowercase" in the glossary). We cast titles and names in lowercase when speaking of ourselves in general. Lowercase also signals lifelong humility.

Starting in 1999, I began to use Cleis Abeni for business purposes involving my published writing and my professional editing. For over twenty-five-plus years, Cleis Abeni has been the byline for most of my written publications.  

I also use Cleis Abeni for members of the public who may have trouble with (or even be hostile to) spelling my legal name lowercase or addressing me appropriately by my legal name, or people who have difficulty with names that have a spiritual cast that is not their own. 

(For decades, I have encountered persistent and incalculable mistreatment, discrimination, and hostility just for having a legal first and last name of a plant and an animal.) 

When I traveled to the city of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ in Nigeria in 1996 to do mediations and outreach on behalf of an organization that I co-founded dedicated to ending violence  against women and LGBTQ people called Genders Within, one of the women I met called me "Abeni." "Abeni" is Yoruba for  "we asked for her, and behold, she came." I honor this woman and that community's naming of me by having my second name be Cleis Abeni.

"Cleïs" is the name for the child of the ancient poet Sappho. "Cleisthenes" was  an ancient Greek populist leader who helped usher in a profound period  of democratic egalitarian prosperity in Athens. 

I fell in love with the  name Cleis when I was a pre-adolescent and I would sign my private "letters to God" in my personal diaries with the name Cleis.

Thus, my second name, Cleis Abeni, brings together longtime resonances and multiplicities that have fueled my lifework.

Avoiding the trauma and violence of deadnaming, doxxing, and other forms of violent harassment is a part of the story of my names. 

My pronouns are she/her/ma'am.