What’s the story of your name?

A simple question that generates meanings made and multiple stories. The ancestors say we choose our name before we are born. Contemporary thought brings in both a lens of mysticism with self-agency and choice, whether that be a chosen or preferred name, or by embracing the names given at birth.

In reflection,

• Who named you, and under what cultural, historical, or political circumstances?

• Does your name carry a story that was interrupted, erased, or mispronounced through colonization or assimilation?

• Has your name ever been changed, shortened, or “translated” for others? How did that feel in your body?

• What ancestral language(s) does your name come from, and what is its relationship to land, migration, or resistance?

• In what ways might reclaiming or renaming yourself be a form of personal or collective liberation?

• If you have a chosen name, what is the story of your chosen name and meaning?

A reflection from a liberation psychology lens:

• What emotions rise when you speak your full name aloud?

  
  

• What stories of belonging, displacement, or survival live in your name?

  
  

• How does your name reflect your inner contradictions, your wounds, your strengths?

  
  

• Does your name help you remember parts of yourself you’ve had to hide to survive?

  
  

• If you could give your inner child a name today, what would it be? Why?

May your reflections generate much compassion, wisdom, and strength.

With gratitude,

Maryam Gazal