Its Charlie Lexicon
"It's Charlie" is what Carlos Santiago Rivera started telling people in middle school when he chose to go by Charlie--claiming his own name when everything else felt out of control in his life.
Overview¶
The shift from Carlos to Charlie was not casual and not cosmetic. It was an act of self-determination by a kid whose body had been making decisions for him since birth--a body that fainted, that vomited, that couldn't handle swings or heat or standing up too fast. His name was one of the few things he could choose for himself, and he chose to change it.
"It's Charlie" was the sentence he deployed, over and over, to teachers, classmates, and anyone who defaulted to Carlos. Two words. Declarative. Not a request but a correction. The construction mattered: not "call me Charlie" (which asks permission) or "I go by Charlie" (which explains). Just "It's Charlie." A statement of fact about who he was, delivered as though the world simply hadn't caught up yet.
Emotional and Cultural Connotations¶
The name change carried cultural weight that Charlie may or may not have been conscious of at twelve. "Carlos" was the name Reina gave him--Puerto Rican, Spanish-language, rooted in the household where Spanish was the language of love and food and family. "Charlie" was English, informal, his. The shift wasn't a rejection of his heritage (he remained deeply, proudly Boricua his entire life) but a claiming of something outside the identity that had been assigned to him. His mother's response--"mi Charlie," folding the new name into the same warmth she'd given "Carlitos"--meant that the name change was accepted as what it was: a kid deciding who he wanted to be.
The moment also prefigured Charlie's approach to identity across his entire life. He never formally came out as nonbinary. He never labeled his gender. He just lived it. "It's Charlie" was the first version of a pattern that would define him: not asking the world for permission, just telling it how things were.