Sometimes a story has a name. And sometimes the name is the story.
Ricardo Provencio has lived with many names since he was born in the town of Superior.
His mother called him mijo, the common Spanish endearment for "my son." He was her baby, the youngest of her five children, so she called him that well into adulthood.
But when he was 6 years old, Provencio received another name.
It was his first day of school in first grade, and Provencio was very nervous. His teacher was old, he said, with white hair and glasses. She looked just like the portrait of George Washington that hung on the wall.
When she called roll that morning, she changed the children's names. Jorge became George. Jose became Joseph.
"And Ricardo," she said, "your name is Ricky."
The name change was confusing for the child, and though he didn't realize it as much at the time, the switch was the beginning of a long struggle to find his place in a culture and a country. That moment in the classroom was the start of a decades-long search for identity.
When Provencio came home that day and said his new name was Ricky, his mother said it was not.
"No, mijo. Your teacher does not speak Spanish very well. Your name is Ricardo."
The Provencio children went to Harding Elementary, along with nearly all of the town's Hispanic children. The Anglo children, Provencio said, went to Roosevelt Elementary.
Provencio, 63, now a counselor at South Mountain Community College, knows now that those were different days.
It was the 1950s in a small mining town in rural Arizona. The Hispanics of Superior lived on the south side of town, and the Anglos lived on the north side.
In second grade, his new teacher changed his name again. He became Dickie. His third-grade teacher gave him another name. He was named Richard, a name that stayed all through high school.
This was before ethnic pride was spoken of in much more than a whisper.
"At that time, acculturation meant losing your culture," Provencio said. "A lot of people can relate to this, especially ethnic minorities."
Provencio was confused at the time. "I'm not an Anglo," he said. "I'm not a Mexican from Mexico."
Some of the Anglo children would call him Ricky Ricardo, a reference to the character on the "I Love Lucy" show. Some of the Hispanic children called him a guerito, a sometimes-derisive term for a fair-skinned Hispanic.
"It's hard to defend yourself when you have to figure out who you are trying to defend," Provencio said.
He was called one name at home by his mother and father and another name at school by his teachers and his friends.
"In your neighborhood you are one thing; in your school you are another," Provencio said. "Eventually, you have to decide who you are."
In 1965, he was called across the stage to get his diploma from Superior High School. The name on the diploma was Richard Provencio.
In 1966, Provencio volunteered to join the U.S. Army. In 1967, he went to Vietnam. In 1968, he came home with a Purple Heart.
After the service, Provencio came home and prepared to enroll at Arizona State University, so he needed to find his birth certificate.
"I went home, and Mom was in the kitchen making tamales. I said, 'Mama, where is my birth certificate?' "
She told him it was in a box under her bed. He found it, but the words printed on the document confused him.
Provencio always knew the name his parents called him.
But for most of his life, he was Richard, too. That was his name in school, for his friends and in the Army.
He is not sure what he thought his birth certificate would say. He had never really given it much thought. Maybe he thought both names would be there.
"Mama," he said, "where does it say Richard?"
"Mijo, your name is Ricardo," she told him. "It has always been Ricardo. Just Ricardo."
In the late '60s, people were becoming prouder of their ethnic heritage. Provencio went to college and became increasingly interested in cultural studies. He began calling himself a Chicano.
His siblings, all older, were perhaps on the other side of a cultural divide that defined that period of American history.
They kept the names that were thrust upon them in schools. Jesus is still Jessie. Gertrudes became Gertrude and then Gordie. Raymundo is Ray, and Javier is Harvey.
But the boy called Ricky and then Dickie and then Richard would not. His name, you see, is Ricardo.
"This is who I am," Ricardo Provencio said. "I'm a Mexican-American. My dad was born here. I've got roots."
Reach the reporter at john .email@example.com.
Ricardo Provencio, an Arizona Storyteller, shares his story about the names teachers called him as he was growing up.
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