Her Jaxness
Why would somebody change their name except for marriage, madness, or witness protection?!It has been commonplace in some cultures for every person to inhabit a new name uponcoming of age. In such customs, personal transformation is seen as vital to the health of the individual and the world.
In modern times, aside from capitalist markers of change such as graduation, retirement, marriage, or formal religious initiations like confirmation, spiritual growth goes largely uncelebrated.
The oligarchs would have us all flailing, hungry, too busied with to-dos and compliance to consider who we are, to reckon deeply with how we are called, to celebrate with ritual and recognition of the deeply individual nature of every soul.
Brown believes that insight, spiritual growth becoming wisdom, rituals of transformation, and other ways becoming the self are antidotes to facism. “Becoming myself,” she states, “increasingly with every decade, is my most powerful way of resisting oppression.”
born March 12, 1980
Stephanie Jacquelyn Rieke
Stephie Rieke
Steph Rieke
Nutty Steph
Jaquelyn Rieke
Jaquelyn Ziegler₁ Fernandez₂ Rieke
Jaq Rieke
Jax₃ Rieke
Jax Basil₄ Brown₅
2008
bound February 13, 2026
Brown on her chosen name:
Reckoning with what is really happening in any given moment has had a way of saturating my life in cycles of rebirth and revelation. Facing what is true, over and over again, I transform! Anais Mitchel once told me she’d never known anyone so committed to self understanding and growth.
The evolution of my name began on a fateful day in 2008 during a formative, daylong interview with two talented reporters: Cuckoo for Cacao by Suzanne Podhaizer, Seven Days Cover Feature & Stuck in Vermont by Eva Sollberger
My nomenclature has since meandered towards a fullest expression of myself as an intuitive, spiritual, marital and personal process of becoming.
Key
STEPHANIE is a name my parents chose with love and whimsy.
JACQUELINE is from my paternal grandmother. Having inherited an original spelling of Jacqueline, she legally replaced the INE with YN, for style. I preferred YN as well when I later took this name, and I also removed the C.
RIEKE is my father’s last name, which my mother took when they married in 1976.
₁ ZIEGLER: While I intended to adopt my maternal surname name as a middle name once I married, I took it only briefly, colloquially.
₂ FERNANDEZ: I planned on taking my first husband’s surname and put off the paperwork.
₃ JAX was coined by a long-time friend as a revolt against my departure from Steph, and then it became me. Thank you Ali. 🙏
₄ BASIL is a name I am borrowing from my sacred plant friend. Basil is known for ancient ceremonial practices around the globe, this small, green essence of new life. Also, pesto is delicious.
₅ BROWN is from my beloved husband, Colin. Also, delightfully, Brown is the surname of my long-time domestic collaborator and chosen brother, Darrell. 🐱
