Whoever says your name doesn’t matter has it wrong. But how you react to your name and what it brings may depend on your personality. Here are the stories of three teenage boys and how each coped with the apparent burdens of his name:

The first of these was Anibal. I hadn’t given his name a thought until the first time I called on him. Another boy burst into laughter. “Animal, animal,” he called, “what kind of animal are you, a jackass?” Ordinarily, I would interfere in such bullying, but Anibal seemed to have it under control. He appeared completely deaf. The class was doing a science experiment. The bad boy kept at it for awhile. Anibal continued to show a poker face, while calmly carrying out his experiment. The taunts became less frequent and finally disappeared. Anibal kept his dignity through it all.

The second boy came to my desk just when the first day of class ended. He was almost in a crouch as he asked me to call him Mr. Smith. He told me his name was Buffalo, and he didn’t want to take the teasing. I thought that calling him by last name would stand out even more, since we called students by their first names. Did he have a middle name? No, he didn’t. The solution seemed so obvious that I wondered how it hadn’t been found before this. I asked him if he would like to be called Buff. He turned the name over a couple of times, then smiled and stood up straight. He tried it out in his new stance as Buff, the cool kid,. not the self-loathing child of hippies. The first time I called on him in class I could hardly keep a straight face. “Buff?” I said as naturally as I could. He stated his answer confidently, then sat back, satisfied. I was very proud that I had named him.

The third boy had an entirely different attitude. As I collected registration cards I noticed the first name “Mussolene,” with a final e. Not wanting to embarrass either him or me, I asked him how he pronounced his name. “Mussolini, like the dictator, “ he said, “but you can call me Moose.