The Power of a Stage Name

How a Stage Name Affects Identity, and the Importance of Heritage

Around the time I turned thirty two I started to get a feeling to change my name. It all started when I decided to become a professional Belly Dancer. As is tradition, women tend to acquire a stage name when becoming a Belly Dance performer. This is widely spread in the East and West, although is seems to be out of fashion at the present moment. Nevertheless, I felt like doing it and there was only one name that felt right as an option for a pseudonym.

The problem with this was that I felt pseudo every time I used it. I felt fake. I think this is a phase many Belly Dancers go through when first using a stage name. I started feeling very disorientated. I told myself this is probably normal, that my sense of identity was being shaken, and that it would pass. But it didn’t. It started to hurt. It took over.

I reached out to my friends and fellow-dancers for some understanding, some wisdom that could get me through. Then I realised I was dealing with something bigger than just my stage name. My “real” name, the name my parents gave me was not sitting right anymore.

Born in Baghdad Iraq, to Iraqi Assyrian parents with roots stretching to Turkey and Iran, I didn’t really feel like a “Rita Paul”. Truth be known, I never felt right about it since childhood. Coming from “The land between two rivers” that are the Tigris and the Euphrates, my people have descended from The Assyrian Empire; a progressive civilisation from 1818 B.C to 609 B.C. Assyria was once ruled by a queen called Queen Shemiran (or Semiramise). She was a powerful queen, loved deeply by her people.

I had thought of Shemiran years ago as my preferred name for a daughter if I was ever blessed with one. As I started performing professionally, it was the name that came up as the only stage name I felt an affinity with, and I realised that I wanted it for myself; that it was calling me back to my true self. I decided to allow myself to have it as a stage name, and the disorientation began.

The issue was so much more than just using this name as a stage name; it was my heritage knocking on my door demanding attention. It was the name I go by on a day to day basis that was being challenged. Three years ago I gave birth to my son Lawrence and that brought my heritage up in my consciousness in a very powerful way as well. I couldn’t escape it any longer but the decision was hurting my head:

If I call myself Shemiran, what about Rita?

If I stay Rita, what about Shemiran?

I’d spent thirty two years as Rita, yet something was telling me it was time to change it. I felt like I was going nuts, and I was driving my husband David nuts with me! It all came to a head.

Then I called Amera (Sydney’s Amera Eid of international fame), as I had a strong feeling that she would be able to help. She said that I should go with it, that it was about who I was channelling and that if I went with the flow of this I would find it empowering – or at least that’s what I think she said as I was choking up and trying really hard to stop my tears from jumping out of my head and all over the phone.

Anyway, I felt like I had spoken to the oracle and that the truth of the situation had been uncovered. I was named “Rita” in an attempt to anglicise me as my parents looked up to all things Western at the time I was born, in ‘70’s Baghdad. To make things worse, when I arrived in Australia at the age of nineteen I changed my Middle Eastern surname to “Paul” in an attempt to fit-in. My name was completely devoid of my heritage!

I have come to a place in my life where I don’t feel a need to anglicise my identity anymore, and my heart misses my land and my people. So, in a bold move, I am changing my name. The artist formally known as Rita Paul will now walk through this beautiful life as Shemiran Ibrahim, Ibrahim being my maternal family name.

It might take me another thirty years to truly get used to it, but what the heck. I’ve answered the call and I feel good about it, and I think that at the end of the day, nothing matters more.