A name is a kind of prison. What your parents choose for you and what they have themselves inherited sticks like a burr that can determine your role in the world—what you are and what you feel free to become. It can determine how people see you. Because of a name, strangers will form an opinion of you before you enter the room.
It’s my belief that people born with certain names are more likely to fulfill certain destinies. A woman named Emily Bookbinder should not be surprised to find herself with a job in publishing, nor should a man named Jaxson Dart be surprised to find himself playing quarterback at Ole Miss.
Though I have at times been proud of my name and the history it represents—we are, according to my father, direct descendants of Aaron, the brother Moses took along when he went back to Egypt to confront the pharaoh—I have also seen my name as the stickiest kind of trap.
I have always wanted to be the all-American boy, as native as the sweet potato, as open as the Great Plains, but in achieving this I believe my own name has worked against me. When I picture myself, I see a lanky right-hander on the way to his major-league debut at Wrigley Field. Or an ecstatic writer singing the song of the nation. I see myself as Jack Kerouac, but other people, because of my name, see me as Allen Ginsberg.
“Rich Jew”—that’s what people think when they see my name on an invitation list or masthead. Or I imagine they do, which, because perception becomes reality, amounts to the same thing. To quote Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, “Destiny! Destiny! No escaping, that’s for me!” That the power of a name is the true subject of that movie is revealed when Wilder, playing the grandson of the mad scientist, Dr. Frankenstein, insists on being called “Frankensteen,” just as the film’s director changed his name from Melvin Kaminsky to Mel Brooks. Whereas Melvin Kaminsky rings up your order or prepares your taxes, Mel Brooks makes you laugh until food comes out of your nose.
To me, being named Richard Cohen meant being assigned a certain fate. Law school. Med school. C.P.A. Not wanting any of that, I experimented with nicknames. Depending on when we met, you might know me as Viking, Rocket, or Cody. I eventually went with Rich, but if it’s helped, that help has been marginal. Though I did consider changing my name—in the way of Brooks, Kirk Douglas (Issur Danielovitch), Jon Stewart (Jonathan Leibowitz), Tony Curtis (Bernard Schwartz), and Gene Wilder (Jerome Silberman)—I rejected this as being both disrespectful to my father and the coward’s way out.
“Rich Jew”—that’s what people think when they see my name on an invitation list or masthead.
When relief finally came, it arrived as an invitation to a party being organized by people I did not know for reasons I did not yet understand. The party was for only, and all, those in the New York area named Richard Cohen. Thrown in the last weeks of a dull year, the “Richard Cohen Party” would change my life.
I’m not sure how many Richard Cohens currently live in the United States, but it must be tens of thousands. There are more than 7,000 on LinkedIn. There are just as many Richard Cohens on Facebook and X. Celebrated or notorious Richard Cohens who have crossed my path are too numerous to document. Wikipedia cites 12, including: Richard Cohen, the British Olympic fencer and the author of Chasing the Sun; Richard Cohen, the billionaire owner of C&S Wholesale Grocers; Richard Cohen, the congressional correspondent for National Journal; Richard Cohen, the attorney general of Maine; Dick Cohen, a senator from Minnesota. Then there is the Richard Cohen who champions conversion therapy and wrote the seemingly pro-pedophilia kids’ book Alfie’s Home, which resulted in many threats on my own life.
There is the Richard Cohen who is married to Meredith Vieira. That is not the Richard Cohen who is a former columnist for The Washington Post, nor should he be confused with the real-estate billionaire Richard Cohen, who was married to Paula Zahn. You’d need to be a conspiracy lunatic with a corkboard and string to keep track of it all. And it’s not helped by the fact that the socialite and fundraiser Patricia Duff ditched Richard Cohen the Washington Post reporter for Richard Cohen the real-estate billionaire, as if the name itself were the attraction.
The Richard Cohen Party was held at a small bar in Greenwich Village. The invitees had been told to come alone—no friends, no spouses, no siblings to confuse the issue. The event was thrown by a small group of Richard Cohens who, having asked the same questions as every other Richard Cohen—What makes me different? What makes me the same?—had pursued and realized a fantasy. “We wanted to get as many Richard Cohens in a room as possible,” Richard Cohen the organizer told Richard Cohen the guest. “We wanted to see what the hell would happen.” In other words, in addition to everything else, us Richard Cohens had the honor of watching Richard Cohen’s dream come true.
I had assumed that no more than a handful of people would show up at the Richard Cohen Party, but I was wrong. More than a hundred, driven by a shared curiosity and need, were at the bar when I arrived. The ghosts of our parents, each explaining why the name “Richard” had seemed the uniquely ideal vehicle for their newborn, mingled above.
Panic rushed through me in those first few minutes. Distinction, uniqueness of personality—it faded like a chimera. I was a jelly bean in a fishbowl full of them, a prairie dog in a teeming prairie-dog village. Nothing. Nobody. But this fear soon gave way—first to relief, then elation. All these Richard Cohens, each with his own biography, made the details of my life seem insignificant, unreal. As with a quality hallucinogen, the initial wave came with a release from individuality. I saw my life as if from high above, where it was easy to forgive myself for all my bad decisions. Being amid these name doppelgängers made it clear no one really chooses anything. Your parents moved to this block instead of that one, you were born this decade instead of that one, you were given this name instead of that one—consulted on none of it, it’s what led you here.
From this followed a powerful sense of agency. As I made my way from group to group—this Richard Cohen wore steel-toe cowboy boots, that Richard Cohen wore flip-flops and shorts, this Richard Cohen chugged a Budweiser, that Richard Cohen nursed a white-wine spritzer—I realized that all these people who shared my name were quite different. Nearly everything in the world was in the bar that night, yet it all operated under the same handle.
So what is a name?, I asked myself.
Nothing!
The cornucopia of Richard Cohens meant that every fate was open to me.
I stayed at the party until only a few Richard Cohens remained. Not only had this turned into one of the most liberating nights of my life, it was one of the least stressful. I’ve always been terrible with names. I will usually end up referring to new acquaintances as buddy, pal, big guy, or boss. I’d finally found a room where none of that mattered.
Rich Cohen is an Editor at Large at AIR MAIL
