Beyoncé’s Name Is a Beautiful Mistake
Speaking of Angie Beyince, Tina’s niece ended up with that last name because Tina and her siblings all spelled their last name differently. It just so happened that Tina’s birth certificate read “Celestine Ann Beyoncé.”
Which, Tina recalled in Matriarch, she wanted to change. Sitting with her brother Larry one night as he did his homework, she wrote, “I said I wanted to practice my own name, so he let me borrow his pencil and said each letter for me.” When they got to her last name, Larry had to think for a second.
“He reminded me that all of us kids had difference spellings of our parents’ last name, Buyince,” she wrote. “There was Beyince, Boyance, and mine, Beyoncé.”
When she demanded that her mother Agnéz do something about her misspelled birth certificate, Tina continued, “I was told, ‘Be happy that you’re getting a birth certificate.’ Because, at one time, Black people didn’t even get birth certificates.” Besides, Agnéz added, “’Your name is beautiful.’”
Obviously the name grew on her, because Tina named her eldest child Beyoncé. “It didn’t matter how it was spelled when it was given to me, it was our name,” Tina wrote. “Our history. The most valuable possession I had, and it was now mine to give. I’ve kept a word going.”
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