First published in Argentina in 2002 and included in the collection El punto vacilante (2005), "Simple Language, Name" opens with Sergio Chejfec's account of an invitation to several writer friends to reflect on their own surname, to test the idea that such an exercise would prompt a deeper meditation on their life and on their origin as a writer. In Chejfec's view, one's surname—that arbitrary yet essential mark of one's identity, a "worthless and featureless coin" passed between generations "like a baton"—takes on an added significance for a writer, because the story of any name is by necessity created from autobiographical elements. Although the tepid response to his call put that project to an end, in this essay Chejfec takes up the challenge by exploring the relationship between his unusual surname and his literary vocation. In doing so, he offers a personal account of his father, the central figure alluded to in the title, in a rare example of overtly autobiographical writing in his work.

I began translating "Simple Language, Name" after finishing my translation of Chejfec's My Two Worlds, in response to an almost universal curiosity among the author's new English-language readers about the pronunciation of his surname, a subject he treats midway through the essay. The essay, of course, addresses much more than that, including a meditation on the confounding nature of language and on the perennial ambiguity of words—which places it immediately in dialogue with this or any other translation that follows.