A story about family, individuality, and choosing who you want to be

A Name That Never Quite Fit

My name is Brad Goldsmith - though for most of my life, it wasn’t. I grew up as Brad Smith, and no, I didn’t enter witness protection or flee some scandal that required a new identity. The change wasn’t dramatic or evasive. It was intentional. And it came with a story.

Growing up as “Brad Smith” in Kingston was… an experience. Any time I gave my name at a public place - the library being just one example - the follow‑up question was inevitable: Which Brad Smith are you? Every school had multiple Smiths. None related to me. Everyone knew a dozen Smith families, and not all of them had stellar reputations. More than once, someone decided they didn’t like me simply because they didn’t like a different Smith family.

For someone who naturally marched to the beat of his own drum, having one of the most common surnames in the English‑speaking world was at times comedic. I never obsessed over it, but I did notice how quickly people assumed “Smith” meant “ordinary.” On some subconscious level, that probably nudged me toward embracing being different - being comfortable with ideas and opinions that didn’t match the crowd.

The Kid Who Did His Own Thing

And truthfully, I was always a bit unusual anyway - not in a tortured‑artist way, just in a “this kid is doing his own thing” way. I think back to being the odd kid who breakdanced everywhere, literally anywhere there was a flat surface. Or, I’d show up places in a full homemade Michael Jackson outfit: the hat, the glove, the jacket, the short pants, white socks, black dress shoes… none of which looked remotely like anything he actually wore: much of which was, in fact, from my grandmother’s dated wardrobe.

So, there I’d be, on the hottest day of the year, walking into the local take‑out dressed like a tiny 70s pimp, just to to buy French fries. I can still hear the owner - a stern Greek man with a thick accent - looking me up and down and asking, “A waddaya weara dat costuma, eh??? Who is dat-a you supposa be?” I wasn’t trying to be weird; I just did what I wanted to do.

The Family Mystery Hidden in a Binder

It’s not that I ever disliked the last name Smith, I just never felt like one.

Then came the twist: I learned I wasn’t even a Smith by blood.

My grandmother’s sister was a nun with a passion for genealogy. She had the time, resources, and curiosity to dig through historical birth and marriage records, assembling detailed family trees complete with photocopies of original documents. My dad was given one of these binders. He wasn’t particularly interested in reading it, but I was, so I borrowed it.

Then I found out something that changed how I saw my name entirely.

About four generations back, my great‑great‑grandmother remarried a man named Smith after having two children with my blood relative. My direct line wasn’t Smith. The biological surname was “Loria,” a name with Italian and Ashkenazi Jewish roots, and a man who remains something of a mystery in our family history. That discovery has stayed with me. I’ve never verified this, and if anyone reading is a passionate genealogist, I’d love to know more about the mysterious “Mr. Loria”.

A Marriage, a Meaning, and a New Name

Leading up to our marriage, my wife and I talked through the usual options. Whether she would keep her name, take mine, or combine them. None of it felt quite right.

That is what led us deeper. We started sharing the origins of our names with each other.

Her surname, Offer, comes from Norman French, tied to gold embroidery makers and goldsmiths, with roots in Old French words like orfreis and orfèvre. It also connects to the Ashkenazic Jewish name Opfer.

The more we understood it, the more it felt like there was already something meaningful there, something we had not fully seen before.

Somewhere in those conversations, the answer became obvious. Instead of choosing between Offer and Smith, we could transform them.

So, we became the Goldsmiths.

Not by default, but by design. It resonated immediately. Not just because there are far fewer Goldsmiths than Smiths, but because it finally felt like a name that fit. I have never lived a particularly ordinary looking life, and the name Smith... well...

But there was something deeper in it too. In alchemy, there is this idea that turning base metals into gold is actually a philosophical metaphor about transformation. Becoming something more intentional than what you started as.

Four Extra Letters, and a Lifetime of Meaning

So now, my name is Goldsmith. And those four extra letters serve as a daily reminder to keep refining myself, to keep striving, to keep becoming.