Humorous Names in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango Streetis a series of vignettes about a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. The people who live on Mango Street tend to have ethnic surnames like Cordero, Guerrero, Ortiz and Vargas. And they tend to have ethnic first names like Alfredo, Alicia, Alma, Angel, Angelo, Armando, Blanca, Elenita, Geraldo, Izaura, Jose, Marco, Marin, Mario, Noreida, Rafaela, Raul, Refugia, Renaldo, Rosa, Tito, Yolanda, Aunt Lupe and Uncle Nacho.

“Everybody in our family has different hair. My Papa’s hair is like a broom, all up in the air. And me, my hair is lazy…. Carlos’ hair is thick and straight…. Nenny’s hair is slippery…. And Kiki, who is the youngest, has hair like fur. But my mother’s hair, my mother’s hair, like little rosettes…smells like bread.”

The narrator’s name is Esperanza Cordero. “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.” “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth.” “But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister’s name—Magdalena—which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza.”

“I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees.” “Esperanza is Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.”

Dance Parlors have names, and dances have names, but Geraldo has No Last Name. Marin met Geraldo at a dance. “She’d be the last one to see him alive. An accident, don’t you know. Hit-and-run. Marin, she goes to all those dances. Uptown. Logan. Embassy. Palmer. Aragon. Fontana. The Manor. She likes to dance. She knows how to do cumbias and salsas and rancheras even. And he was just someone she danced with.” “They never knew about the two-room flats and sleeping rooms he rented, the weekly money orders sent home, the currency exchange. How could they?” “His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another country. The ones he left behind are far away, will wonder, shrug, remember. Geraldo—he went north…we never heard from him again.”