A patrician during the Roman Empire was a person of noble birth, an aristocrat who had high social standing and owned a significant portion of wealth and land.
A plebian was everyone else — the ninety-five percent who did the work: farmers, merchants, laborers, crafts people, who had no rights and could not own land.
Eventually, the plebians managed to attain equal rights through protests and walkouts because a city could not survive, nor could a non-working aristocratic class survive when there were no workers to do the necessary tasks of keeping the armies marching, the cities clean, and the citizenry fed.
Still, throughout the centuries, those two words have held some sort of power. Although I was named after the patricians, I never felt “patrician.” I always considered myself to be plebian and my name ironic, though I am glad of the name “Pat.” I would not like being called “Plebe.”
Actually, I never really liked the name “Pat,” though I took that version of my name as an author name since it seemed to have a nice strong sound and connotation. I also used the name to introduce myself to new acquaintances, partly to help them find me online but mostly because I didn’t like giving my real name to strangers. (It felt as if I were giving too much of myself to people I didn’t know and perhaps would never see again.) When I was mostly nomadic, this pseudo-name didn’t matter. It only became a problem when strangers became friends, or when online connections became offline friends, and by then it was too late to change names.
My writing career, such as it was, has all but disappeared, so what I call myself doesn’t really matter, but it was the name I’d used for so long, that it seems convenient to keep it. The truth is, I no longer know what my real name is. Or if I have one. I spend so much time by myself, that there’s no need of a name. I just . . . am. (I once wanted to learn the names of birds; then it dawned on me that the names of birds were names we gave them, not the names they gave themselves, so it seemed rather a silly project. If you can’t learn the truth from the inside out, then looking from the outside in didn’t seem to gain much.)
A week or so ago, when I had just loaded groceries in my car, I heard someone call out, “Pat!” Since I didn’t associate the name with myself, it took me a moment to realize that a good friend was calling me from across the parking lot. (I recognized her voice before I realized who she was talking to.)
So, until I discover my real name, “Pat” is fine. Besides, to distinguish me from all the other Pats in this town — at least a half dozen of us — people identify me as “Pat in the Hat,” which is kind of cute. And accurate.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
Bertram's Blog 
January 20, 2026 at 9:38 am
I instantly thought Plebe Bertram doesn’t have a nice ring to it. Then I spent way too long trying to think of a rhyme, like Pat In The Hat. Plebe Is A Dweeb? Heck no!
January 20, 2026 at 10:19 am
Heck, no!
January 21, 2026 at 6:14 am
Wow, love the car🤩
January 21, 2026 at 11:27 am
My name is pretty plain jane as names go. I’ve occasionally been asked if Christmas played into my parents’ choice, but it didn’t. My mother used to tell me that they simply wanted a name that nobody could misspell or shorten into an unpleasant nickname…so, Carol it is.
I like your hat, rhyming notwithstanding. (I also like the hat you wear in your gravatar image…the red poppies are cheery and becoming.) These days I don’t own a single hat, unless we count a knit toque someone made for me that I’ve never worn.
January 21, 2026 at 1:15 pm
That was kind of your mother to give you a name people couldn’t turn into an unpleasant nickname. Too many parents don’t think about the ramifications of the names they choose. Except for me, my mother did that — sticking with single syllable first names and no middle name, such as “Fred.”
As for the red poppy hat, I always thought of that as my “author hat” even before I began using it as a gravitar image. Probably because in my early adulthood, I loved Barbara Michaels’ books, and she always wore such a hat for her author photo. I can’t imagine not owning a single hat. I own dozens, a lot were gifts and hand-me-downs from people clearing out their closets and not knowing anyone else who wore a hat.
January 22, 2026 at 9:47 am
I blame my inability to spell on my name – I before e and all that.
January 22, 2026 at 2:19 pm
That made me laugh, but yeah, it sure would be a problem!