Carole Hsi Lin Hsiao 蕭席琳
This is a picture of my family. I’m the youngest, less than a year old, wearing a checked jumper propped up by my mother. All of the adults in the photo are refugees from China, my father’s family, whose last name is Hsiao. My middle Chinese name, Hsi (which Microsoft likes to autocorrect), comes from a lineage poem that Hsiao relations from my generation share. My grandfather, who was a scholar at the University of Washington gave me my personal Chinese name “Lin” upon meeting me. It means gem and is written in a poetic manner. My aunts, who are in the back row, were the first females of our lineage to receive personal names. The name Carole comes from my mother’s first American friend. All of these names are written in distinct ways to convey political, poetic, and sentimental meanings and all of them are often misspelled or miswritten. I grew up with expectations imbued by this family who transported their values from pre-1949 China. But I also grew up in America, where people who look like me are often silenced. I care about the rich history of my name but feel that my relationship to my history is changing. This year, I turned 60. It is said that I have completed a life cycle. This year I am also reclaiming my name and my identity, one that has often been erased by systems of power, to begin a new cycle that has yet to be explored.
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Dany Srey-Snow
"It’s an invitation for people to really know the authentic me, just like my family. I share how it’s a reclamation practice and it’s been welcomed with openness."
Ashna Mediratta
"They had moved to the U.S. and were searching for a name that would be easy to pronounce with English letters and sounds, and would not be butchered by an American accent."
Shin Yu Pai*
"In my early 20s, I traveled to Taiwan on a root-searching tour and upon coming back to the States, decided to reclaim my Taiwanese name, which I have used full-time since being 23."
Eric Chan 陳志宇 진지유*
"I must also remind myself that the folk arts I practice are traditionally performed and passed down anonymously, so we need not hold any of our names as sacred, precious, or permanent."
Jane Wong
"She asked a random customer to name me my “American” name and loved how simple it sounded...I keep forgetting my Chinese name."
Jasmine Vu*
"It was not until high school that I became increasingly aware of my identity as an Asian American, which turned into resentment. Why did my parents have to sacrifice their names for survival?"
Bonita Lee*
"It is fitting how this is the place of rebellion in China, as I was always rebelling against my own culture while trying to fit in when growing up in the United States."
DeShawn Rivers*
"Growing up in Florida, I attended primarily black schools and classmates would often make jokes about my middle name by saying, 'That’s where the black is.'"
Carole Hsi Lin Hsiao 蕭席琳*
"All of these names are written in distinct ways to convey political, poetic, and sentimental meanings and all of them are often misspelled or miswritten."
Jay Stoneking*
"Some days I wish I had, just to be more visible among my own community. Other days I feel grateful I don’t have to navigate racism the same way the rest of my family do."
Taslim Jaiyeola Adejare Dosunmu*
"A part of me wishes my name expressed more of my mixed heritage, though my sentiments about that have changed a lot over time depending on the social context I was in."
Cassie Whitebread*
"For me and my mother, this last name adds an extra sticky layer of tension to meeting people for the first time. 'Whitebread? But you’re not white.'"
Renata Lumanau
"I was able to learn Mandarin from a young age, but since we lived outside Indonesia since I was 3 years old, I felt disconnected not only from my Indonesian culture, but even more so from my Chinese one."
Jenn Ngeth*
"I remember the first time I heard my mother say my last name out loud. It was the first day of Headstart and just as easily as it slipped out of my mother’s mouth, it was too slippery for my teacher to pronounce."
Ren Han
"As my gender identity began to differ and change, I gravitated towards my online handle 'Ren.' It was more gender neutral, an ambiguous in-between to all the different iterations of my name."
Evan 田辺 Captain*
"Much of my childhood and adolescence was shadowed by learning to hide that part of myself because that was easier than just existing in my own truth in a white community."
Sandy Ha
"I was given one name by my parents when we lived on a different continent. After living in this one for a few years, I chose a completely different name for myself. I was six. "
LiLi Marjorie Pigott
"I was born somewhere in China to a family that left me at a police station in Guangdong Province with no name or even a note with my birthday."