Change My Name, Change My Game

In the course of my life, I have changed my name three times......( but I promise, this Substack title stays!)

I have changed this Substack title since I started it last week.  

I've abandoned "The Dirt Rd. Diaries" Yes, I live on a dirt road in North Central New Jersey; Yes, Bedminster, the town I live in is still rural, and yes, I live on my grandparent’s farm where I was born, then moved from in 1967, and bought from my family about three decades later. 

However.

After my first post a few weeks ago, the title just didn't sit with me. I needed to move on with the "farm" as narrative. I mean, it will always lurk around every corner of my life. But I need a fresh start.  

I needed the same kind of new beginning many years ago in my freshman year of college. That’s when I first changed my first name. But only my first name from Anne to Ryder. Ryder is my sister’s middle name. My middle name is Wyatt. I thought Ryder sounded cooler. I waved goodbye to my parents in their Ford station wagon along with my what I thought was a miserable high school legacy packed in the back seat, forever. Then turned around and introduced myself as someone new to my roommate: Ryder Sollmann. Just like that, I thought, 18 years of misery would be erased.  

I hated Anne. The girl and the name. Not the small, inner child, necessarily. The lost, adolescent and teenager who moved from New Jersey to Connecticut at age twelve and never felt like she fit in to her new surrounds. My mother was miserable moving from her home in New Jersey where she had lived her entire life, leaving a myriad of friends and family behind her. My brother, two years older than me, went off to boarding school. My baby sister Liz, then age five, entered preschool. I went from my New Jersey private school K-5, to a Connecticut public school nearby, on a school bus, not knowing a soul. That girl was immediately dubbed Anne So-Fat by one loud-mouthed class clown, and the name stuck grades 6-8.

Anne was indeed a chubby kid, whose low self esteem took a nose dive. Aside from growing pains and common teenage insecurities, I felt stupid. I couldn’t pass math or french to save my life, and later in high school, I cheated from the kid in front of me to pass chemistry. Compared to my peers, my test scores were low. My only saving graces were my writing and art skills.

Looking back, I know I had dyslexia and ADHD. My own daughter was tested at age seven and treated. But my issues were never recognized or dealt with in public school in the 1960’s and 70’s. My inexhaustible, wonderful but frustrated father helped me with my homework right through senior year in high school. My mother’s dyslexia was so much worse than mine, she was the talented artist who nurtured that talent in me. My brother, too, had trouble reading K-8. His boarding school teachers fortunately recognized the help he needed and gave him plenty of it.

When I came across my old IQ test much later in life, guess what? No one bothered to tell me I was just as smart as everyone else, and maybe even smarter. It could have saved me a lot of therapy bills.  

I blamed myself. I couldn’t wait to get away from Anne She would always be dumb, overweight, lazy, uncoordinated at sports, and no boy would ever ask her to dance.

ANNE was the angry name my father called out to me when he saw a D on a report card, or when a chore went undone, or my bed went unmade. ANNE was not the loving, silly, happy nickname of Gilly, he gave me as a baby that had so much love wrapped around it. ANNE shot of his mouth as an angry, sharp report. A bullet aimed to wound.  

So, at eighteen, I changed my name so I never had to hear it again. And because no one knew me in that new place. I had a chance at becoming something and someone else. Someone cooler and smarter. Someone different. Ryder would be that person, I was sure of it. I moved her in with the other names and became Anne Wyatt Ryder Sollmann— or simply, Ryder Sollmann from there on out. 

Later, when I began to write, A. W. Ryder Sollmann became my by-line. Legally, only Anne W. R. Sollmann got me on a plane or turned on the electricity in my Manhattan apartments. 

When I got married, I added all the names together: Anne Wyatt Ryder Sollmann Ziebarth. But Anne S. Ziebarth had to stay my legal name. I had to keep two business cards— one in the legal name, and one in the name everyone knew me by which included Ryder. It was fine as by-line but would not get me a seat on JetBlue. It did not match my driver’s license or birth certificate. 

My former husband hated I used what he said was a STOLEN first name: my sister’s middle name of Ryder. “It’s not your name.” he used to say to me. “I refuse to call you a name you took from someone else. It’s not yours.” 

Ass-holery. That’s what that was. 

In fact, Ryder is a family name and many of my family members lay claim to it. John Ryder was a captain the American Revolution, and the Ryder family helped to found and settle Elizabeth, New Jersey in the 17th century. My sister was named after my mother’s uncle, Chauncy Ryder McPherson III, a staunch Scotsman, a Ryder in a long line of others. My own middle name, Wyatt, is equally as historic— Sir Francis Wyatt was the first Royal Governor of Virginia settled the 1600’s, my great grandfathers’ direct descendant. But I digress.

He said this to demean me. He opted to not call me anything. Literally, he never called me by name. To our daughter Lizzie, it was “Your Mother.” To me, it was absolutely nothing, no address, just speaking directly to me as if I was always supposed to know it was me, he was talking to. To others, it was “my wife.” To my parents, it was the dreaded ANNE. He knew it grated on me. He did it anyway. He seemed to get some kind of satisfaction from it. 

My name change did not ever change the fact I persistently chose the wrong men since high school.

When we divorced in 2022 I learned at the signing of the decree I would have the option to change my last name. OF COURSE I WOULD! Freshman year all over again. Except now, there was no family to pass judgement, and I could give a flying fart as to want HE would think. If my only child, my lovely daughter Lizzie and my sister, Liz, were okay with it, I would finally make Ryder my legal first name. 

And they were fine with it, so I put Ryder right up front, my last name in the middle —I didn’t want to go back there either (my brother’s wife is Mrs. Sollmann) — and Wyatt at the end. I am now Ryder Sollmann Wyatt. An entirely new name to go with my entirely new life.  

I have published many essays and stories under the byline of Ryder S. Ziebarth, which readers will not find unless they search that name. People and friends from my past could find me a lot easier as A. W. Ryder Sollmann. This new persona barely exists. But I already like her better. She’s free. No one will ever put this person down again.  

I want to tell you the wild and precarious stories of my life in my new and rightful voice, to teach you things I’ve learned during the years, to give advice and guidance about things I learned the hard way, so you can learn the easy way. So you don’t have to change your name, unless you want to.