The Return of the One-Named Man - Pacific Standard
But those tasks are just minor nuisances when compared with the biggest hurdle: In a post-9/11 world, Gregory cannot get past the Transportation Security Administration, and so, he cannot fly.
Gregory is hardly the only child in the esteemed clan with a politically driven name. Dick and his wife Lillian (Lil) frequently toyed with convention when naming their children, and as those children grew, some changed their own names. Gregory’s nine brothers and sisters include Michele; Lynne; twins Pamela Inte and Paula Gration (so the twins would be inte-gration, get it?); Stephanie, who now goes by Xenobia; Christian, a physician who runs a private practice in D.C. and also serves as his father’s business manager; Miss, who was named so that even the most racist would have to address her as Miss Gregory; singer Ayanna; and Yohance, or Yoey, as his brothers refer to him, who changed his last name legally from Gregory to Maqubela in honor of a professor he once had and to connect with his African roots.
When I ask Gregory the first time he fully realized how having one name set him apart from his peers, and even his siblings, he seems stunned. “To be honest, until you asked me that, I never really even thought about it,” he says.