Nice to Meet You – What’s in a Name?

My formal name is Kathryn and I go by Katia. I started to use Katia as my everyday name around 2001. Honestly prior to that time I had been struggling with my name for a while. 

I lived twelve of the first fourteen years of my life outside the US.  I am a US citizen.  I was born in the US and grew up in Belgium and Brazil. I went to international schools and I was the American in my class.  I represented the US and my classmates represented other parts of the world, Canada, Italy, France, Korea, South Africa, Venezuela and so many corners of our planet. 

When I moved back to the US as a freshman in high school, I was shocked. I thought I knew what it meant to be an American, to be a US citizen. What I found out was I that didn’t fit into American culture and there were so many aspects of it that I didn’t understand.  Jokes and cultural references went over my head. I would mix up the most basic idioms and would often miss a social cue or two.  I had had very different experiences growing up and I often couldn’t relate to my new friends and my new community.

When I was a senior in high school, I was waiting to see the dentist and the dental assistant came over towards me and squatted in front of the little girl next to me and said, “Katy we are ready for you now”. I stood up and then the dental assistant stood up and I realized in that moment that I had outgrown my name.

From that point on I tried to find my adult name, one that fit. For a while, I simply used my formal name Kathryn and then I tried some different nicknames like Kate and K. I didn’t feel like any of these fit me.  There was something uncomfortable for me in all of them. 

In 2001 I decided to choose the name that I loved, Katia. Katia was the name of a girl a year ahead of me in the school I went to in Brazil.  Once I had left Brazil her name began to symbolize for me everything I loved about Brazil. When I began to use Katia as my nickname I would tell people that it was my Brazilian nickname for Kathryn or Katarina much like Kate or Katy was and although true when I lived in Brazil no one ever called me Katia.

Only a couple of years ago, I came to realize that the reason I was so uncomfortable with Kathryn, Katy, or other more traditional American nicknames I had tried was because with them there were so many assumptions that people made as they met me, as I was introduced to them. Kathryn, Kate, and Katy were very common American names and with them came assumptions about how I grew up, the societal norms that I knew, and context for stories I shared. I couldn’t live up to these assumptions. It appeared we were not birds of the same feather and here we were facing each other. Not living up to these assumptions created unease, miscommunication and left us often with no sense of how to connect and proceed. 

When I changed my name, it worked I was met with fewer assumptions about my background and it was amazing.  I could share with them how I had lived overseas, what I loved about the world and my experiences. And my questions and curiosities about others were now met with a willingness to share not judgment. We had the space now to meet each other.

As I began to become present to why I longed to change my name I realized something else needed to change. I needed to start telling the truth about why I changed my name. My hope in sharing the story of my name is that myself and others will remember as we meet each other to be careful with what we are assuming and give each other the space to actually meet and to not make assumptions based on a name. 

So, I am excited to share with you the story of my name and I look forward to meeting you.