Regina Ratner

My name is really Regina Ratner. Instead, I’m known by the prosaic, yet complicated nomenclature, Kay Matthews.

First, let’s look at the Matthews part of the name. It’s my father’s name, of course, as the patriarchal practice of the progeny inheriting the male name (the means of establishing economic ownership) was de rigueur in the 1950s, the decade of my birth (and still largely true in the aughts, a word I’ve always recoiled from without even knowing its archaic meaning is “nonentity”). Except that it really wasn’t my father’s name, which was D’Urphy, from the Scots-Irish settlers who inhabited the southeast portion of North America that eventually became Appalachia. His mother divorced—very unusual in those days—the D’Urphy and married the Matthews—Bosque, as we knew him—but he never officially adopted my father. While D’Urphy/Matthews managed to physically leave southern Illinois behind he never managed to escape the hillbilly heritage that impugned his autodidactic generated self image.

My mother’s name was Ratner. Why oh why didn’t they let me have Ratner instead of Matthews, which wasn’t my legal name anyway. What a wonderful Jewish name that evokes the kosher deli on the Lower East Side of New York City where they served (it’s gone) cheese blintzes, onion rolls, and borsht. I could have been a cousin to Katz’s, the other deli on Bleecker Street where they serve pastrami sandwiches (my mother-in-law’s name was Katz). My mother’s family didn’t do so bad, either. Her father owned a couple of department stores in Denver and one in Phoenix where she learned the retail business. We could have been the Katz/Ratner/Schiller (my father-in-law) family.

The Kay part of the name is indicative of my father's imagined self image. He (apparently my mother was complicit) named me Regina Kay. Regina means queen in Latin. They named their middle daughter queen? But guess what they named their eldest daughter? Claudia. If she had been a he would they have named him Claude, Jr.? I shudder at the thought. But it gets worse. My younger sister’s name was Lana Riquelle. Lana after Lana Turner and Riquelle made up. Of course she never went by either name and was always Riki.

How does one live in northern New Mexico with the first name Kay. Hello, my name is Kay. “Que? Your name is what?” So all the old time Hispanos call me Kate. Which is way better than Kay but not as good as Regina, which in Spanish is pronounced Ray-hina. Ray-hina Ratner sounds pretty good to me. I know plenty of other people who’ve changed their given names, like Susan—to Tanya—and Brian—to Bari, but let’s be real, I’m Kay Matthews to everyone I know and Kay Matthews on Google search and Kay Matthews on the hundreds of La Jicarita articles, magazine articles, blog posts, and books I’ve written. So be it. But maybe Regina could have been a real contender. I’ll never know.