Van Santāna

When folks see the name Van Santana—which is usually how it is styled, rather than van Santana or Van Santāna—the tendency is to think Santana like Carlos Santana, which is fine and not entirely unintentional; yet there is also santāna (or saṃtāna), a Sanskrit word that means something like ‘eternal,’ ‘continuum,’ ‘a series of momentary events,’ or ‘life-stream;’ that’s nestled in there, too.

And consider then when I, as Teresa Van Santāna, refer to the ‘self-loathing continuity’ of The Secret of Secrets-verse—whereby time itself is ashamed of its obsession with orderliness and I constantly berate it for interfering with my stories—I am also acknowledging how my very name is beholden to it, just as I (and we) are in some real sense chained to a time continuum (albeit no one really can explain how to my complete satisfaction).

Van is a tussenvoegsel, of course, in the style of the surname prefix in Dutch language names (as in Gus Van Sant, for example), commonly used to indicate where the family is from.

So given that, we have Teresa From the Eternal or Teresa From the Life-stream.

You can call me Tracy for short. Or T if even that is too long.

And there you have it: T Van Santāna, at your service.