You're Ling? You're not who I was expecting!
What's in a name, and does the name make the person?
Dear flower friends,
How are you doing? I hope you got my postcard from Spain - it seems so long ago now. Time passes through my fingers like water - but I promised to write again soon and here I am. I recently acquired a copy of ‘Flowers and Their Meanings’ by Karen Azoulay and the first thing I checked was whether my name was in there. I have a couple of floriograohy books and cross referencing I find different meanings assigned to Heather, aka Ling, including solitude, tranquility, meditation, protection from supernatural energies. It’s fascinating how we assign meaning and symbolism to inanimate objects and plants, even more fascinating to me how a set of four letters can have such breadth of interpretation.
I have an unusual name: Ling. Have I ever met another Ling? I’m not sure I have. There are many, many other Lings, of course, it’s very popular overseas! As a child I had a precious piece of paper on which a Chinese friend of my parents drew out all the pictograms of Ling she could recall, I believe there were around 33. A quick Google has just brought me a list of over 52 characters and meanings - not including compounds, place names and real names. Amongst other things Ling is: zero; damask; to whisper; to listen; a lark; a wagtail; a tail feather; a sandfly; lattice work on a window.
On Wikipedia, I find this:
Ling is a power, like that of the uncanny intelligence of great masters of building or of healing, and is a divine reciprocation for offerings and pledges of devotion to a deity or demon (…) It is the inchoate order of creation, that is the "medium" of the bivalency constituted by the opposite forces of the universe (…) Ling is the mediating bivalency, the "medium", between yin and yang.
Ling, it appears, is a powerful name. And also: a fungus; a tuber; a mountain range; the sound of water flowing; a mud carp.
But that is not how I got my name, and I am not Chinese. My father is British, my mother is Danish. Parents, forgive my sharing, but this is the story I have been told. Conceived at art college in 1971, my parents married pretty soon after they met and six months later I arrived - a couple of weeks late so I was well cooked! There was no pretending that I was a tiny baby, come early, and by way of mollification it was decided I should be named after my paternal grandmother. My beloved Grandma had a complicated history. Born illegitimate she was adopted and raised with the name Betty Manton, but she never forgot her real name, her birth name, Jessica Laing Pollard. Married, she was known as Betty Warlow, but she always used “JLP” as her signifier - I have records and books belonging to my Grandma and they are all signed “JLP Warlow”. Grandma’s birth family were Scots and “Laing” was pronounced ‘Ling’…. see where this is going? So I became Ling. My grandparents forgave my parents for this hiccough in the timeline of their marital relations, and I was condemned to a life of being asked, frequently “Where does your name come from? I thought you were going to be Chinese!”
I grew up in a beautiful part of the world - a little village close to Whitby, just inside the North Yorks Moors National Parks where the moors every summer are carpeted with the beautiful pinks and purples of the ling - Common Heather (Calluna Vulgaris). Somewhat astoundingly, being a child of strange name and foreign parentage and therefore subject to substantial teasing ( but never bullied) at school, I made it to the age of 15 - at school in WHITBY, a FISHING TOWN! - before I became aware that one of the main catches of fish off Whitby was the ling.
I chose the flowers. We didn’t move to Yorkshire until I was a toddler but somehow my name was rooted in the locality of my childhood with places such as Lingdale close by. My Danish mother and grandmother (Mormor) ensured I was educated in Norse myth and legend, and I was raised bi-lingual and very aware of my name as a Danish flower - lyng, common heather, again familiar in place names such as Lyngby. As an adult moving to the Wirral I am once again surrounded by Viking heritage and place names - Lingham, Lingdale, Lingbrow. So, yes, I chose the flowers. The tiny, pink and purple common heather which grows everywhere, especially on the moors.
When I created Nature’s Palette, my botanical art project in which I created the national flowers of all the countries represented at the Eurovision Song Contest, I came up against the challenge of creating ling. Although I had considered attempting this tiny, fiddly flower, I’d always shied away from the challenge, but one day in March I found myself just doing it almost without thinking, it was truly one of those magic days of flow, it just happened. Creation flowed through me, like water. Which of the many meanings of my name were in charge that day?
As well as floriography, other factors have lead me to this rumination on my name. For 17 years, in business, I’ve hidden behind the moniker ‘Dragonfly’. As a designer, reaching into my clients heads, drawing out images and ideas, bringing them to life - this worked. Things are different now. I’ve coined this job-title ‘paper botanist’ and I want to do things that challenge me - and others. I create my botanical pieces, such as my Paper Ling above, to inspire viewers to look closer at our wonderful British Wildflowers, to appreciate, cherish and celebrate the amazing nature which surrounds us! And I want to do that as Ling. My name undoubtedly strengthened the connection to the nature which surrounded me as a child - I guess my question is, would I have done it anyway? What do you think? Do you have an unusual name, and how has it affected you? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this subject. I found some interesting answers here.
I can only speculate. But I am proud of my name and happy to step into it. Ling Warlow, Paper Botanist. I like the sound of that! Thanks so much for reading,
Until next time, with love, Ling
PS The current workshop schedule for any local readers who would like to learn how to make paper flowers is available at paperbydragonfly.com