Recently, as I was getting into a car, the driver clocked my name and asked, “Like Musk?” I sighed and answered as I have now dozens of times: Yes, just like the stiff-arm salute guy.
I’ve been aware of Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, for a while, mostly because it’s relatively rare to encounter a non-Israeli with my name. But I didn’t give him real consideration until February 2018, when his company SpaceX shot a red Tesla Roadster into space. I opposed this, reflexively, because the notion of intentionally flinging junk into the skies has always seemed abhorrent. Ultimately, though, I was persuaded by the estimable climate writer Eric Holthaus, who wrote, “That’s exactly the seductive, aspirational vision of the future we need.”
Seven years later, any aura of idealism that surrounded Mr. Musk is gone. His lauded plan for low-cost electric vehicles was unofficially scrapped a year ago, and after a short feud with Donald Trump, Mr. Musk endorsed the former reality star in his third bid for president.
Mr. Musk is now the face of widespread pain, overseeing the hobbling — if not outright destruction — of the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and even the country’s national security apparatus. As his team makes further cuts to critical government agencies, SpaceX is conveniently positioned to reap billions of dollars in government contracts.
It has not been a pleasant time to have our name, particularly because it’s so unusual. At the peak of its popularity, in 2018, no more than a couple of hundred newborns were named Elon. (Individuals with my full name are even more unusual.) That scarcity is part of why, I assume, the throngs of protesters outside Tesla dealerships often don’t bother with a surname. “Stop Elon,” read one sign. “Honk if you hate Elon,” another.
Gone are the days when someone, upon hearing my name, might think of Elon University in North Carolina and its marvelous, pugnacious old mascot, the Fightin’ Christian. It’s been years since someone’s brought it up as a reference point. I still haven’t adapted to the new reality.
These days, I have a heightened sensitivity about the name’s connotation because I recently published a book and see my name in more places than usual. Having potential readers associate me with mass firings and longer wait times when calling Social Security seems like a sick joke for someone who wants to interest readers in a book about how New Yorkers managed to survive as their city crumbled around them in the early 1980s.
I now feel dread about casual introductions to strangers — something I used to love, as I basically talk to people for a living — because often, I’m met with a pitiable expression. “Like Musk?”
If one’s name is a brand, then mine is tarnished. It should not surprise that, however fleetingly, I’ve wondered what it would be like if I could introduce myself as Bob or Matt or Jim — you know, something bland and lacking baggage. I wonder how that would feel.
No parent can foresee all the possible repercussions of naming a child. For one, it’s a decision sometimes made in an atmosphere of great stress. My son’s name was chosen from my wife’s hospital bed. My name was meant to honor my father’s late, beloved uncle Allan, and they wanted a Jewish name, so Elon (the Hebrew word for “oak tree”) was close enough, recalled my father.
My parents, once they decided on a name, endured a hellish time. I was born at a bit over three pounds, two and a half months early. I suffered three cardiac arrests, a pierced esophagus, hyaline membrane disease, apnea, bradycardia and hydrocephalus. My mother nearly died from blood loss. After two and a half months in an incubator, I was taken home. My parents wouldn’t know for years how much my intellectual capacity had been compromised. That I turned out relatively fine — far more so than the other children on the floor — is due to some of the sharpest doctors in New York but mostly to stupid luck.
In the subsequent decades, my parents have watched what I’ve done with the name they gave me — a voracious reader but a middling student, a struggling journalist who eventually found some success and a serial dater who finally met a wonderful woman with whom to share a life. They’ve seen me, Elon Green, become a father. Which is to say: Over 46 years, my name has been attached to nearly everything I’ve accomplished, personal and professional.
I won’t give up the name, even if, on and off social media, people curse it and all it’s come to represent. If anything, the accumulation of daily nightmares wrought by the famous Elon just makes me more determined to balance the cosmic books — or improve my Google search results.
As one destroys, may another create and rebuild.
Elon Green is the author of “The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York.”
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