My name is Anu Sharma and according to my parents, my first name: Anu, means small, but powerful and my last name: Sharma, means son or daughter of a priest. For the longest time I personally, did not really like my name. It was never pronounced correctly. I would always hear it pronounced like AH-NEW or A-NEW (it's pronounced UH-NEW). In addition to that, I could never find my name monogrammed on anything so no key-chain, cup, or Coke bottle with my name on it for me :( And to make matters worse, my name is unisexual; meaning both guys and girls have my name, but I have only ever encountered guys with it which is really awkward. Because of this, I never really felt like it fit me. At one point I even considered changing my name to something more prettier and more feminine. Since I really wanted to preserve the Indian origin of my name, I considered names like Meena, Kajal, Lakshmi, Shivani, Priya, and so many more (I literally had about a fifty name list)!
At the time I really liked the name Meena, but later I started to feel conflicted by these two personas. I began to confuse myself whenever I would write my name or whenever a teacher would call me Anu. I started to question if I really wanted to tell them my new name. One of the biggest reasons why I did not change my name was because I knew that a lot of people knew me as Anu and if I were to change it, it would confuse them. I also felt that by changing my name I would be both physically, and metaphorically, changing my identity and I did not feel comfortable about that, so I learned to embrace my name. It took a really long time and I still struggle with it sometimes. Yes, I am a five foot three inch Indian girl who comes from a Brahmin family; my name is definitely Anu. But, I am also so much more. I tend to excel in the arts, I can sing, I am talkative, dedicated, extremely compassionate, and super affectionate (I LOVE HUGS!!!!)With this realization, I would sort of like to think that I have changed the definition of my name, especially since I have been on this Earth for seventeen almost eighteen years. Just as the ideals of societies change over time, so do names. Therefore, being confined to just my culture's definition is simply unacceptable. Another way to look at it is: a name, just like a word, has many synonyms and meanings. So why should a name have one meaning?
