The names I chose
Self-selection before memory
When I was a child—according to my parents—I went through a renaming phase. I'll have to take them on their word because I have no recollection of the process.
You see I was born an Aaron. Aaron Jesse Hiller. I was told it was a biblical reference. Or maybe that was the middle name? Not sure now. Regardless, what I do know is that at some point, I instructed my parents to not use it.
My first name, that is.
Allegedly, I asked to be called AJ at first. That tracks. No direct evidence, though. It contracts my first and middle names. It's short, catchy, and easy to say. I believe it.
However, that apparently didn't last long.
You see, I grew up on the east coast, and by the time we had moved to the west (another story for another time) I was Jesse. I only know that because I recall receiving Christmas gifts from our grandparents, and the labels on them were clearly for "Jesse", not "AJ", or "Aaron". So by then, I was officially Jesse.
The names that chose me
So, as Jesse, I acquired many other nicknames throughout my life. Some lasted for a time. Others have stuck indelibly.
The Kid
The original persona.
My dad always called me "kid". Not in a diminutive way. And not in a labeling way. It was more of a qualifying statement. I was the youngest of three, and while we were all kids technically, I was definitely the kid of them all. Hence, "the kid", or just "kid".
This term of endearment became my persona for many years growing up. It wasn't like a "Billy the Kid" type of kid. I was anything but trouble. In fact, I took great pains to stay out of the limelight and walk the straight and narrow, as they say. My siblings made the family contribution to raising hell and getting noticed. I was more prone to sit and daydream than to scheme ways to get into trouble.
"Kid" was both an appropriate description as well as a way of being. I was doted on. Spoiled, some said. Youngest, definitely. Required guidance. Yep.
This moniker lasted for the better part of my developmental years, even into high school. I don't recall when I heard it last, but I'm going to assume that once I ventured off to college, I stopped responding to it. An outfit I had outgrown. Mostly.
However, as we are all someone's kid, as I look back on my life so far, I can point to that persona and understand so many things about the choices I've made based on that lens.
Hiller
Announcing my presence.
When I started playing soccer competitively in my early teens, I stumbled into the most identifying nickname of all. Oddly enough, it wasn't a new name at all, but one that I was born with, but learned to use in a different way.
It wasn't my first club coach who helped me find it. That was Javier. Not the nickname I adopted. That was his name, Coach Javier.
His claim to fame in my story is that he was the first person to challenge me to rise up to an occasion. That's another story entirely, which is covered to a great extent in The Underachiever.
Incidentally, Javier also gave me his shingaurds as a parting gift when I moved up to the next team. It was both more than a gesture, and probably a logistical thing for him. After borrowing them for our last game, he may not have wanted to deal with cleaning them himself. We may never know.
So no, it wasn't Javier who helped me discover my core identity. It was my next coach, Smiler.
Smiler, it turns out, wasn't his first name either, and I don't think it was his last name. His first name was David. I can't recall his last name, but it was definitely not Smiler. I do recall him being quite smiley, but I don't really know from whence his nickname came. Regardless, that's what we called him: Smiler. Or Coach. But most of us—players and parents alike—just called him Smiler.
And Smiler was a comedian.
Like the time when the team was flying to Calgary for an international soccer tournament and he had us gag the stewardesses with styrofoam cups during the oxygen mask portion of the emergency preparedness demonstration.
Or the time at an end of year awards celebration where he taught the team how to sing the bawdy sea shanty where the chorus asks what to do with the "drunken sailor". The verses proposed putting him in bed with the captain's daughter, shaving his belly with a rusty razor, and more helpful tips to sober him up. He had another song about being a lumberjack that involved wearing a dress while singing.
I think he might have missed his true calling onstage.
Perhaps.
At any rate, I digress again, because while Smiler was a hoot, and there are countless more stories about my time with him as a coach, what is important here is that he helped me find an identifying name. Hiller.
Yep, you heard it. He helped me find my last name. But it wasn't the name insomuch as it was the way he helped me use it that was so important.
Allow me to explain.
So Smiler was a fantastic footballer. Not just in his youth, but during his time as our coach as well. He taught us many fundamentals: grass-cutters, overlapping runs, playing to the feet, playing into space, and so much more. These skills lasted my entire career.
However the most impactful lesson he taught me—that went well beyond the pitch—was how to call for the ball.
In Smiler's mind, calling for the ball is not just something you do casually or unintentionally. As in "Hey!" Or "Pass it!" Or just whistling for it.
No. To Smiler, you need to call for the ball in a way that is strategic, elusive, and declarative.
This lesson does not appear in the coaching manuals, by the way. Which made it stand out all that much more.
So to Smiler, the keys to calling for the ball are that you are clear with your teammates, but not entirely clear to your opponents: hence strategic. One can accommodate this by using your own name. In his case, he would obviously use Smiler, as in the following example.
- Smiler is open and sees an opportunity to make a run that his nearest opponent does not see.
- He starts his run towards the open space and simultaneously calls for the ball using his last name.
- "Smiler!"
His opponent may or may not know his specific name. Does it truly obscure the fact that he's making the run? No. Will his opponent ultimately know his name after the game? Probably. Could this tactic possibly result in a game-winning goal? Undoubtedly.
Part of the traits of winning teams are constant communications. Even at the highest echelons of play. Switching defensive assignments. Noting an open player who needs marking. Calling out for an opening you see for you or someone else. All require clear and open communications.
The beauty of using your own name in cases like this is twofold. First, opponents do not know names usually, at least at the youth club levels, and at least not at the beginning of the game. And you don't normally have names on club jerseys. This is obviously different at pro levels, but in the nameless ranks of competitive club soccer, it's a truth. At least it was back then.
Secondly, it could be used elusively. Say you are making a run, and another teammate is also making a run. Calling for -their- name instead of yours could also help obscure the intent of the play.
So, it's strategic and can be elusive.
It's also declarative when you are emphatically calling for the ball.
During practice when we would scrimmage, Smiler would incessantly call for the ball whenever he was open.
"Smiler here!" he would shout. Approaching for a pass. It was a way for you to help your teammate know what options they have.
When you have the ball, sometimes you have blinders because you're facing one or more opponents directly in front of you. Hearing your teammates availability instead of seeing it can help you in a pinch.
Sometimes also, your name can clarify when there might be doubt about who _should_ get the ball.
"Hiller's ball!"
"Hiller here!"
"Hiller!"
It stuck. like Krazy Glue. As much as "the kid" became my tween and pre-pubescent identity, Hiller became my teen and early adult identity. It was all rooted in soccer, but it transcended my social groups.
It got so when I arrived into conversations or social gatherings people would greet me like Norm at Cheers: "Hiller!"
So, it was a self-applied nickname, super-saturating my last name with more meaning than it used to hold. But it was something I used as a tool.
And so I became Hiller...again.
The Names I found
Unlike the family and personal nicknames that I helped develop and acquired, other names found me.
The Bishop
Diagonally streaking.
Some nicknames we choose. Others find you. The Bishop was of the latter kind, and also has to do with soccer, which is not surprising.
Bishops, in chess, as you may or may not know, move diagonally on the chessboard. That is their role. They can move as far as the board allows, or until they encounter another chess piece, whichever comes first.
In soccer, diagonals are lines that players run on the field and tend to cut through defensive postures.
Whether your opponent is play playing zone or man-to-man defense, a good diagonal is going to cut through them both. Sometimes to the open space behind the defense. Other times in front.
In my later years on the pitch I was a defender. I was fast, tall, and physical. And I could match the fastest players on the field. And I became known for being able to hit a diagonal ball across the field to a player moving behind the defense.
Hence The Bishop: he who hits long, diagonal balls. While I'm not entirely positive that is the true meaning of the nickname, that's my best guess.
Again, we may never know.
A New Persona: Jooles Müeller
Suddenly me: a new identity.
After college, and after the turn of the millennium, I found myself chasing a dream. It was your run-of-the-mill wanderlust, romance, and coming of age story. And the story of it was centered on a new identity: adventurer, wanderer, explorer.
Jooles Müeller was a vanguard in his own mind, wandering the streets of Belgium, in search of the love he thought he was after.
What started as a series of emails to friends, soon blossomed into a full-blown fictionalized travelog novel. Jooles was the protagonist, fighting off the stagnance of his office-job productivity with a plane ticket, a love interest, and a dream.
And the persona jumped off the page and into my life. Often times after that I would sometimes forget if I was speaking as myself or Jooles, or if there was even a difference any longer.
The nickname doesn't get used a lot, but I found that it was more about the evolution inside that had changed and the nickname helped others recognize it.
The names I couldn't escape
While the names like Kid and Hiller, or Jooles and The Bishop were taken or given, others were seemingly systematically assigned to me, no matter what I did.
Will the real Aaron Hiller please stand up.
It's strange to hear your name, and see someone else respond to it.
During my tenure at college, I encountered a familiar name. It was mine, and it wasn't mine.
As I said earlier, my legal, birth-given name is Aaron. Aaron Hiller.
In college, our coach Wolfgang—another very memorable character—would ruthlessly tick through the roster and ask point blank questions of us.
As in the first time I met him. I was scouting colleges during my senior year in high school. I had picked a few local state schools. This one I was able to actually meet the coach. The team was warming up for a spring practice when I met him. He turned to me after very few polite words and asked me point blank:
"So Jesse, are you good enough to play here?"
Inner monologue: Uh, I think so.
Outer monologue: "Yes"
That was my first impression of Wolf as we got to know him. Stark. To the point.
In college, while I knew I went by Jesse, the legal system, and more specifically the Social Security Administration did not. They still thought I was Aaron Jesse Hiller. And when you apply for things using your legal name, they are embedded into the fabric of your existence. So in college, while everyone called me Jesse, the administration thought of me as Aaron.
And so it was with the soccer team. It did that to everyone though, so there really was no hiding your paper identity.
Now, flash forward from that initial meeting with Wold several years. It's August. We're at the initial kickoff for tryouts, and everyone is standing around him learning who else has signed up to tryouts that year.
"Aaron Hiller"
I responded.
But this time, so did someone else.
For a second, the name I had abandoned was standing next to me in cleats.
What?
There is only one Hiller, I thought. Well, I knew better than to actually think that there were no other Hillers. But I felt certain there couldn't be any other Aaron Hillers. At least not at my college? On my soccer team?
I was equal parts confused, put out, and intrigued. Who could this doppelgänger be?
Luckily we looked and sounded nothing alike. But it was a shocker, to be sure.
Gmail and their addresses.
There's such a fine line between email.address, and email address.
Gmail, it seems has a flaw. Or a design issue.
Namely, Google does not care if your account has a period in it or not. So, any.name@ is the same as anyname@, and a.ny.name@, and so on. It completely ignores them.
And I know this because apparently there is also another Jesse Hiller. Not me. Not Aaron. Jesse.
Wow. I'm feeling a little claustrophobic in here now. How many of me are there in this place?
I had the email Jesse.hiller@ for many years. I never had any issues or mis-delivered mail. I did receive a lot of spam, and still do, but that's another story for another day.
One day however, I noticed a cell phone bill for an iPhone. I didn't normally use my gmail account for things like that, but I don't remember all the things I get email for any longer so it didn't surprise me. However, I thought I had paid off my last phone "upgrade".
So, I looked deeper into the email, which in modern parlance means I opened it and read it. And I found it was addressed to Jesse Hiller, however the address was not mine and the purchase was not mine either.
Hmm...but it was definitely an installment plan.
I logged onto my cellphone service provider and confirmed that I did not make the purchase. I hadn't.
I chalked it up to some sort of spam or something, and promptly forgot about it.
Until the next month.
I received the same notice. Same address. Same purchase. One month's less capital owed. This was a live receipt, and not mine. But it was addressed to me.
But then it dawned on me. It was addressed to my name, not me.
I looked a little closer at the email address. this was sent to the one without the period in it. This was not sent to me.
So then I tested this hypothesis and sent an email to both addresses. I received both!
I quickly realized that I was receiving someone else's email.
And it was only then that I was made aware that google doesn't care how many periods I have in my email address, it will ignore them all.
Nice to know.
I wondered whether the other Jesse Hiller was getting the notices or bills and whether they were paying on time. At some point they stopped coming or they just went to spam. I decided that I only received this one invoice for some reason, and it never asked me for money or anything, so I let it be.
No harm, no foul.
And yet, my name kept trying to tell me something. But what?
We know where you live, Tony
Being mistaken for the lost heir of a family fortune.
Then there was the time I was mistaken for an heir to a family fortune. I mean, I wished I was wealthy like that.
At the time, I was living in Menlo Park. It's a wealthy enclave of the SF Bay Area. I however, was not necessarily wealthy. I was living in a renovated garage junior apartment in someone's backyard. I don't know how a wealthy heir rolls, but I felt pretty sure it wasn't like that
Regardless, one day I received a call. I didn't know the number so I let it go voicemail.
"Mr Hiller. This is so-and-so with such-and-such law firm. We are contacting you with regards to MONEY YOU OWE US. It is urgent that you call us back IMMEDIATELY. If you do not respond we will be forced to take LEGAL ACTION."
Huh?
I was completely miffed. This was before the era when "phishing" was a known behavior or term. We were still building the damn web. However, I had heard of people getting scammed by fake legal action before so my alarm antennae went up.
I mean, there was a Hiller Aviation Museum, and the Hiller name was synonymous with helicopters and some of the peninsula flight history. But that seemed like a stretch? Did they just pick up a phone book (yes they still had them back then) and call every Hiller?
Probably.
That was not the last time I heard that message. I must have received half a dozen calls and messages like that over the next six months. I was still alarmed, but then one of the messages mentioned a person I didn't know: Tony Hiller.
Tony who?
I already rediscovered my last name. I've got a bag of nicknames here. I've got two doppelgängers floating around the universe with me, and now you want me to be Tony also?
C'mon, man. This isn't cool.
So at some point I don't know if I decided to take one of their calls or I called them back, but somehow I was on the phone with someone related to this 'case'.
"Mr Hiller, we know you have the money"
What?? I felt like Jeff Lebowski.
Look man, like...I'm like the dude, man. You're looking for the _other_ Hiller. The Big Hiller.
Honestly, I didn't know if I was in the movie, making a movie, or just hallucinating.
At any rate, I decided to repeat to them as many times as I could: I'm not who you're looking for, stop calling me! And I stopped taking their calls.
At some point they just stopped calling. There must be a cost-benefit analysis they use to figure out how many months you can track something like this before it loses you money. They reached it, though.
I haven't received a call from them for over 20 years. However, I still feel a little odd walking into the Hiller Aviation Museum.
I keep thinking in the back of my mind: do _they_ know where Tony is?
The name that arrived early
Van Halen was already taken, so...
I am a drummer. Have been for almost as long as I can remember. That has carried through my nearly my entire life.
My styles have gone from rock, to grunge, to pop, to country, to Bossa, back to rock, and now it's dad rock.
Regardless, when I was in college, music and soccer were my identity system. I was Hiller during the day and on the pitch, and drummer during the night at gigs.
And I was notorious for being a rocker.
At my audition for the grunge band in college that became my core tribe through those years, I let them know in no uncertain terms that Dokken rocks. I mean, I'm not wrong.
But anyway, my point is that when my musician friends thought of me, they thought of rock. Van Halen. AC/DC. Ozzy. Ratt. Dokken. And me. All equal.
And we played a lot of music. Festivals. Dorms. Pizza joints. Bars. Grills. Parties. And everywhere I went with my long hair, hessian attitude, and Ludwig drums, it was Rock, Rock, and more Rock.
At some point someone called me Mr. Van Hiller. It was a close conspirator who was part of my inner consiglieres.
I didn't love it. But I didn't hate it either. And I secretly adored the fact that I was so synonymous with rock in my friend's eyes.
What had been Hiller this, and Hiller that became Van Hiller this, and Van Hiller that.
However, it didn't really stick for long.
I felt like an imposter trying to put on the gods laurels trying to co-opt the essence of Van Halen for my own usage. So I didn't really push it. And people moved on. The fad faded.
Sort of like how the ring went missing from Sauron.
Well, sort of like that. A little bit.
However, little did I know that fate would unite us again. This time though, it would be official.
The name we built
Love will find a way
When I was young, I never really had grand plans or ideas for myself. I never saw myself as a soccer star or a leader of any kind. I just saw myself as a guy trying to improve himself one day at a time. I did for a time want to be an architect with a passion, but after trying it in college found I enjoy design far more than the buildings themselves.
And throughout my life as many of us do, I dated. I fell in love. I was smitten.
But then I met my equal.
She was fiercely independent. Smart. Modest. Funny. Sexy. Sweet. All the things I had been looking for. Her name meant truth. That seemed significant but I didn't understand why.
Together we found harmony. We loved movies. We were very similar in many ways, and very different all the same. Both very headstrong, independent, and capable. Both from broken homes. But we were our own people. Happy leading our own lives.
However we both knew we would be better together.
So after many years of dating, I proposed. She didn't say yes immediately, but life isn't like the movies. it's better. She said yes after a moment of shock. Probably.
In our initial planning I don't recall discussing names, and I didn't really think about it much.
Truth had another idea.
She didn't like her maiden name. It represented parts of her family she didn't want to associate with. She was aware of the Van Hiller nickname, but it had never come up in discussions that I recall.
The Van Els name came through her family line in a slightly winding way, as family names often do. It was Dutch, connected to her grandmother’s side of the family, and it carried enough distance from the parts of her maiden name she wanted to leave behind.
It was out of Truth's mouth that I heard the words: what about Van Hiller for a last name?
It was one of those moments they talk about in movies and songs, where the blinky lights and shimmering sounds wash over you. It was when everything becomes clear to you.
All of the ways my name had changed over the years. I had always assumed I would be a Hiller. However I was being offered something better. And it's not better because it locks into place all of the things that my name had brought me through: calls with lawyers, shouting my last name down the sidelines, responding to ridiculous nicknames, doppelgängers.
It was not better because it made me less Hiller.
It was better because it made room for more than Hiller.
My partner did not erase my name. She completed the shape of it. She gave it a place to hold both of us.
The name I live in now
Recording my journey, one name at a time.
So now I am Jesse Van Hiller.
A name I chose. A name I found. A name I somehow met before it became mine.
It carries my previous incarnations inherently and it deftly joins my history with my future.
Maybe that's what a name is.
Not one fixed thing.
A record of all the ways we have been known.