November 1, All Saints Day (1 John 3:1–3)

I have a last name that is often mispronounced. Solis—should be quite simple. In places like Guanajuato, Mexico, where my father was born, the name is popular. However, in the midwestern town where I grew up, the name was often pronounced as not “soh-lees” but instead “soh-less.” Easy error, I thought. Many times, I would let it go instead of correcting someone who didn’t know any better. No big deal, I thought—until the day my father heard someone calling me Margarita “Soh-less.”

I believe what disturbed him more than the mispronunciation was the fact that he saw little reaction from me or any attempt to correct the poor soul. “Our last name is pronounced ‘Soh-lees,’” he firmly said to the wide-eyed person. I knew by the tone of my father’s voice that I was about to learn a great lesson. He was proud of his name and of the people in his family and lineage who carried it. He wanted me to know what an honor it was to bear the name Solis and the values and expectations that came along with it. The name Solis was a privilege and had an ancestral lineage in which I belong.

I did not earn the name or work for it. I was given the name out of the mere fact that I was born to a father who carried it. The name represented a lineage that included a faith-filled people who loved and served God and loved their community of family and neighbors. The name Solis was woven in a Mexican culture rich with ritual and tradition, a culture that my father knew and loved. I think he held the belief that if he could preserve the pronunciation of the name, then perhaps his children one day would embrace the beauty that was rooted in this heritage that was ours to discover. He knew that the name Solis was significant and that to be a Solis was a status of which to be proud.