It’s a saturday afternoon and my mother and I just finished our monthly grocery shopping. We filled our cart to the brim with fruit snacks and popsicles. The cashier came by and asks for our membership card. Not two seconds goes by before he asks:

Cashier: Where are you from?

Me: DC

Cashier: No, like where does your name come from?

Me: My name comes from a language I do not understand nor speak. It comes from a culture I am associated with but not a part of. A name so common in Nigeria where my mother is from but so different here in the United States. Chidinma, what does it mean? It can mean the day is bright or God is beautiful, different meanings depending on which part of Africa you are from. In America my name is seen as ghetto. It’s too complicated with too many vowels or silent letters. Some even try to argue and say why is there a c when it sounds like an s. People look at my name and automatically think of a black girl from the south side of DC. A white woman in charge of my youth group was so surprised that I didn’t act how she expected. Which leads me to think what exactly was that. Loud, ignorant, and flamboyant. But the funny thing is my name doesn’t have any silent letters people just choose to ignore the part they don’t understand and my name doesn’t sound like an s but that is just how they pronounce it. I represent none of those characteristics which you would know if you spoke to me for five minutes. Ignoring the letter like it doesn’t exist because it is too hard for people who only speak english to say it. Like ignoring me because sometimes my nigerian accent comes out when I talk fast so my friends just laugh like they understood what I said or calling the food of my people like fufu or okra soup nasty because they’ve never heard of it. But it is also like me dismissing my last name, Lantion, which does not have a meaning but if you ask my brother and sister’s father Wayne, it means to spin wills which our ancestors did when brought to america but who knows. You may ask why I do not claim the only last name I’ve ever known because it is not truly a part of me. It’s not my last name it will never be my last name because he is not my father. To my understanding my father’s last name is Hunter which was supposed to be my last name. In middle school I used to imagine how my life would be different if my name was Hope Hailey Hunter because it connects me to my biological father more than to a man that is connected to my siblings but not me. The name Lantion connects me to something that was never mine and that shouldn’t be mine, to a group of people that are not related to me but share the same identity.

Cashier: I just wanted to know where you’re from.

Me: Well so do I.

Mom: You come from me li’l mama what you think? Stop making things complicated your name is just something for people to call you by but it’s not who you are. Got it slim.

Me: You’re right I would never change my name anyway because it’s now a part of me there is so much behind it now that to get rid of it would be like erasing a part of my personal history.