Chris Horrell

For most of my life I’ve always been known as “Chris Hor­rell”. Three years ago I decided that “Christo­pher Hor­rell” was more sophis­ti­cated, and that’s how I’ve been intro­duc­ing myself ever since.

It’s a lot eas­ier get­ting new friends, col­leagues, and acquain­tances to call me by my full name. Peo­ple who’ve know me for a while seem a lit­tle uncom­fort­able with the per­ceived name change. It’s not that much dif­fer­ent, really, but call­ing me “Christo­pher” prob­a­bly feels like they’re using the name of a stranger. When peo­ple do refer to me using my full name, I actu­ally feel as though I’m a slightly dif­fer­ent per­son. A more mature per­son. An adult even.

I like that.

I like the idea of cre­at­ing a whole new per­sona — even if it’s not that much dif­fer­ent from my old one — with a sim­ple name change. Actu­ally, maybe that’s not it at all. What I like is how “Christo­pher” seems to more accu­rately reflect who I am now and not who I was in the past.

So now you know.