Imagine spending the first nineteen years of your life without an official first name. That’s what “Baby Boy” Pauson did. His father disappeared and his mother never got around to picking a name for his birth certificate. People referred to him as Max (after his mother, Maxine), yet his official records still noted his legal name as “Baby Boy.” Tormented, teased, and bounced around for years, Pauson perceived himself as an outcast and escaped through comic books, animation, and fantasy. It wasn’t until he entered San Francisco’s School of the Arts that he discovered that others valued his creativity and nonconformity. He finally found a lawyer who helped him create an official identity with the weighty name he had imagined for himself as a child—Maximus Julius Pauson (Eckholm, 2010).

For most of us, our name (or nickname) is an important element in our cognitions, or thoughts about ourselves. For example, many women who marry debate whether to change their last names: some worry that losing the last name they were born with might signify the loss of a personal identity; others see changing their name as a way to communicate their relationship status or signify a new family identity. We introduce ourselves using the names we prefer (our full name, a nickname, or a moniker like “coach” or “doc”), based on the way we perceive ourselves and want others to perceive us. Though you may not have struggled with your name, you—like all people—have certainly struggled with the challenge of understanding and projecting your identity in order to become a more competent communicator. Three important influences on our thoughts about ourselves are self-concept, self-esteem, and self-efficacy (see Figure 2.2). We discuss each of these in turn.