Moment: (too many to count)
Me: *calling my brother for literally any reason*
"DANNY!!"
Him: *in a calm monotone voice*
"That is my name."
Over the past few weeks, I've introduced myself to a LOT of people. New classes, organizations, and experiences mean meeting a bunch of strangers, which to some could be seen as a bunch of people who aren't your friends yet, and to others could be their worst nightmare. I tend to fall someone in the middle, because even though I'm a total extrovert, I still would much rather be surrounded by familiar faces than in a crowd of unknowns. But when I do find myself in a situation where I don't know someone, I will definitely go up to them and introduce myself (this is always my fun fact for my officer introduction slide) followed by the question, "What's your name?"
It's a simple, socially acceptable way to break the ice and learn what is possibly the most basic piece of information about someone, but I like to take it a step further and ask something that most people might not ask, or even know the answer if they were asked: "What does your name mean?" I love asking this question because you can learn a lot about a person's cultural heritage, their family traditions, or even what their family hoped they would grow up to be.
From different people‘s responses, I have learned about cultural naming practices, like the Icelandic tradition of using a parent's name in their surname rather than a family name, making the last name of a male Icelander ends in the suffix -son (“son”) and that of a female Icelander in -dóttir (“daughter”). I've met people who were named after their dad's best friend or their mom's favorite author, and others named after the day of the week, month of the year, city, state, or country that they were born in. It's always extremely fascinating to me to hear how people were named, because your name is what you are known by, and the story behind that name speaks volumes.
So here's my story. As I mentioned in that PowerPoint slide above, my name, Sunitha, is a combination of my parents' names, Suresh and Anitha, and it means "good character" (Su = good, nitha = conducted). People tend to get a little scared to say it when they just see it on paper, so they resort to Cynthia or Samantha or ask me if I have a nickname, but I promise, it sounds exactly how it looks. People who are familiar with space history hear my name and ask, "Like Sunita Williams?" which is so awesome because I share a name with the Indian-American astronaut who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman of 192 days and was the first person who ever ran a marathon in space. (Also speaking of names and space, my name is going to be sent to Mars on the Rover in 2020! P.S. submissions are now closed but it’s going to be in nanometers so it’s pretty low-key lol)
My middle name is Esther, after Queen Esther in the Bible. My parents chose this name for me, and Daniel for my brother, because both Esther and Daniel were immigrants in a foreign land who grew up to become powerful leaders in their new countries. They immigrated to the United States from India a year before I was born, and their hope for my brother and I was not that we would become the POTUS (although that would be really cool), but that we would prosper in this new land that they moved to in order to provide us with bigger and better opportunities.
Esther means "the star," and that's one of the explanations for my nickname, Shiny. A lot of people have come up with other ideas for why I was nicknamed Shiny, rather than Suni or Sunny, and I now claim all of them. When I was a kid, I was far from the extrovert that now writes on the internet and loves performing. I used to literally hide behind my mom's legs (can't really do that anymore...I'm short but not THAT short) and people would joke that "Shiny is shy!", and now that I'm older, the running joke is that "Shiny is shining" whenever I wear blingy Indian outfits.
But the true reason for why my mom chose to nickname me Shiny was her childhood inspiration: Shiny Abraham-Wilson, an Indian Olympic track-and-field competitor. Ever since she was a kid, she decided that if she ever had a daughter, she would name her Shiny, and that daughter is me :) I didn’t learn my actual name until I started pre-school, and to this day, in certain contexts (like family reunions) my brain doesn’t even respond to Sunitha, so the nickname is a big part of who I am.
Names carry a legacy, both from the past and into the future, and every person has a unique story for how they got their name. Now that you’ve heard mine, I would love to hear yours! What’s your name, and what does it mean? Why was that name chosen for you, or why did you choose your children’s names?
