Bob Dylan, in his drawling, haunting way, released a song-story called Isis in 1976 which was hailed as a lyrical masterpiece about a flawed hero in a spaghetti western-type dreamscape.
"I married Isis on the fifth day of May/
But I could not hold on to her very long/
So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away/
For the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong."
The Secrets of Isis was a popular television show in the 70s in which an ordinary schoolteacher transforms into the Egyptian goddess to save the world. She was my Saturday morning superhero before Wonder Woman barged in. I knew her magic invocation by heart: "Oh zephyr winds that blow on high, lift me now so I can fly."
Nowadays, the name Isis can get you fired, profiled, rubbed down, thrown off flights and shunned by all wrong-thinking bullies and paranoiacs out there. Grammar teachers might even be afraid to tell students that "isis'' is a double copula, meaning the word is appears twice in succession in a sentence.
Isis is the name of the Egyptian goddess of womanly strengths, a feminine icon, adored as a perfect mother and protector. She is the goddess of nature. The name used to mean something powerfully beautiful–now it means a bomb strapped to the chest of a suicide drone.
A New York Home Depot employee says he was fired recently because he has "Isis," the name of his ex-girlfriend, tattooed on the inside of his lip.
Kirk Soccorso who got the tattoo four years ago, and must have been living in a cave with no wi-fi, said he had no idea "until just recently" that the acronym stood for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the extremist terrorist group.
When Soccorso overheard a co-worker using the word he decided to show off his old tattoo. (It's always a bad idea, by the way, to tattoo names of flames on any body part.) He was then told to go home and not return. His employers say it was not only the tattoo that got him fired.
In Australia, Frank and Sheridan Leskien of Sydney are distraught because their daughter Isis is being tormented at school because of her name. The family wants people to stop referring to the terror group which, monstrously, has taken responsibility for video-taped beheadings, as ISIS so their daughter and others with the name can live a normal life. Frank Leskien told the Daily Mail that people used to say "What a beautiful name!'' Now, they just look at him funny and scowl.
In the United States, a woman named Isis Martinez last year started an online petition to reclaim the name.
She is asking people to show support to "save'' the name, begging the media to "stop calling the terrorists by our name." The petition has attracted over 46,000 signatures.
Actually, lots of nice famous non-terrorist people are named Isis. Miss Cuba 1954 was Isis Margarita Finlay who participated in the third Miss Universe pageant in California, USA.
Isis Gonsalves, a scholarship-winning attorney, is the eldest daughter of Ralph and Eloise Gonzalves, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and his wife. Her sister is Soleil and her brother is Storm–so they better watch out, because one day some fool might decide to construct a bad-mind group called Soldiers of the League of Extremely Insane Loyalists and Storm could be the code name for an armageddon strike in the eyes of some over-enthusiastic Homeland Security agent at Miami airport.
So because some ugly people are bent on destroying the world, should all girls and women named Isis re-brand themselves? As Martinez said, if she changes her name, the terrorists win.
Dear politicians and media people, just drop the acronym. Type a few more letters, use a few more syllables in the newscasts and speeches and refer to the group by its full destructive name–the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Don't make it all cute and soundbite-ish.
Terrorists should sound like terrorists. Take a cue from the movies and comic books–all the bad guys have bad guy names like Cobra and El Diablo and Mr Freeze. Don't soften the face of terror.
Isis signifies love and beauty, not advanced creepology. Isis is a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman who protects and heals. Isis is just too pretty a name to squander and cheapen on death, destruction and evil.
�2 Send me your thoughts but no suspicious brown paper packages tied up with string at wrenchelsa@hotmail.com