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Column 180

My name came from . . .

Intro by Ted Kooser
09.10.2008

What’s in a name? All of us have thought at one time or anoth­er about our names, per­haps ask­ing why they were giv­en to us, or find­ing mean­ings with­in them. Here Emmett Teno­rio Melen­dez, an eleven-year-old poet from San Anto­nio, Texas, proud­ly presents us with his name and its meaning. 

My name came from . . .

My name came from my great-great-great-grandfather.
He was an Indian from the Choctaw tribe.
His name was Dark Ant.
When he went to get a job out in a city
he changed it to Emmett.
And his whole name was Emmett Perez Tenorio.
And my name means:  Ant; Strong; Carry twice
its size.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2000 by Emmett Tenorio Melendez. Reprinted from Salting The Ocean: 100 Poems By Young Poets, Greenwillow Books, 2000, by permission of the editor. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.