Intertwined & Interconnected is an oral interview project aimed to collect and document the numerous stories and experiences of queer St. Catherine University students in regard to chosen, given, and nicknames and how they connect with each person’s identity.
The questions that drive this project are:
How do names shape our identity?
Are names inherently connected to our identity?
There are currently 8 interview transcripts that have been edited for confidentiality and each participant is identified by their chosen set of initials. The interviews have then been analyzed through finding themes within each and contextualized with the ideas brought up in “Names and ‘Doing Gender'” by Jane Pilcher and Parts III and V of The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming.
This research is important because there is currently a gap in literature critically examining the intertwined connection between names and identities, especially when looking specifically at naming and identity within the LGBTQ+ community. There is currently work that focuses on specific labels and how it is connected with identity within the queer community, but there is very little research that specifically examines given and chosen names and their impact on identity within the community. Intertwined & Interconnected seeks to fill some of that gap in literature, as well as fitting into the wider fields of queer theory and onomastics, the study of names.
This project went through the St. Catherine University Institutional Review Board due to the research for this project involving human subjects through interviews.