I’ve always had an interest in the military. When I was young, I was fascinated by fighter jets, I...
Names carry stories. Some are simple, passed down through family or chosen for their sound. Others hold layers—myths, memories, and quiet meanings that travel with you. My middle name, Sylkie, is one of those names.
It’s a reference to the selkies, the mythical seal-people of Scottish and Irish folklore. Selkies were said to live as seals in the sea, but could shed their skins and step ashore in human form. Their stories are filled with longing: love and loss, the pull of the sea against the ties of land. That push and pull has always resonated with me. In my daily life, I’m forever yearning for the sea, slipping away to sail whenever I can, only to return to the shore and the routines of work and home.
The name itself came from my dad. He did much of his sailing in Scotland, where selkie stories belong as much to the landscape as the cliffs and the tides. He must have picked up the legend there, but he also found a more modern inspiration. In the early 1980s, a folk-influenced singer called Philip Shackleton released a record called Sylkie. My dad had listened to that song with its roots tangled in sea myth; he chose it for me.
So my name is part folklore, part music, and part my dad’s own story. It carries the sea inside it, a reminder of the bond I shared with him and the passion he passed on. Every time I introduce myself, I carry that thread of mythology and melody with me, an echo of Scotland’s shores, a record spinning on a turntable, and a father’s way of gifting his love for the sea to his daughter.
In the selkie stories, there’s always that ache of belonging to two worlds. Maybe that’s why the name fits me so well. On land, I build a life, but it’s at sea that I feel most alive. Just like the selkies, I’ll always be caught between the two but maybe that’s not a curse. Maybe it’s exactly what my dad hoped for: a name that would remind me where I come from, and where I’ll always yearn to go.
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