As Catherine Gracechild tells it, on the autumn night she went into labor with me, my birth accelerated so fast, her mind could not process the whirlwind of my arrival. So she delegated the task of naming me to my middle sister, Shayna, who was 10 years old.

She chose Tiffany, and my parents presumably liked it at first. Why did they have second thoughts?

“I changed your name because the other teachers where I taught thought Tiffi sounded like a stripper,” my mother finally said.

“And you listened to them?”

“It’s silly, I know.”

“So what if I were a stripper, or more sexually free for that matter?” I asked.

The Tiffi my mother’s co-workers envisioned could have been vastly different from Lauren the insufferable, who did not drink or have sex until she was 20. Lauren’s name was not said in ecstasy; it was announced by nuns in monophonic tones in the context of winning good girl awards. Lauren was called onstage on high school graduation day to receive the plaque for the student who best exemplifies Christian values. Lauren was president of the National Honor Society and student of the month.

But what about Tiffany? I needed to know how it felt to be her.

I was faced with two roads, which did not stretch before me, but appeared behind me, leading to the Lauren I’d become. Tiffany would have walked that first path, had she lived on, while Lauren definitively took the other. The first was indeterminate, but the second was crystallized. I tried to envision Tiffi’s potential trajectory. But I couldn’t do it by myself — not as Lauren.

I changed my name, not legally, but on Facebook and on my iPhone. I told my friends and family I would answer only to Tiffi for three weeks.

The more people referred to me as Tiffi, the more I started to feel like her. To feel like her was to assume a rebelliousness — to become unshackled by the conventions I had allowed to dictate my days. Two of my girlfriends took me out and dressed me as the stereotype of what I imagined a Tiffi would be. Instead of wearing yoga clothes and sweats, I wore short skirts and form-fitting tops. I wobbled in high heels. I stopped straightening my hair. I let my curls — the conflicting mixture of ringlets and limp wisps I was born with — be their wild selves.