The Name That Wasn’t Mine

When I was seven years old, my teacher asked me to stand up in front of the class and introduce myself. It was supposed to be simple—say my name, tell my favorite color, maybe share something fun about me. But when my turn came, I froze.

I said the name my parents had always taught me to use. The sound of it filled the room, followed by polite claps from my classmates. But as I sat back down, something inside me stirred. The name didn’t feel right. It felt like slipping into someone else’s clothes—wearable, but never truly mine.

At first, I brushed off the unease. Children doubt silly things all the time, I told myself. But the feeling followed me like a shadow, quiet yet persistent.

One night, I asked my mother why I had that name. She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. There was a pause, heavy and unnatural, before she smoothed my hair and whispered, “Because it’s yours, darling.” Yet, the way she said it made me feel the opposite.

That was the first crack in the glass.

Years passed. I carried the name through childhood, through school roll calls, through signatures on my notebooks. Outwardly, it became me, but inwardly it felt like a mask I had to adjust every time I wore it.

At sixteen, curiosity turned into discovery. I had gone searching through old boxes in our attic, hunting for childhood photos for a school project. Dust filled the air, and the dim light flickered as if it, too, was hesitant to reveal what I was about to find. Beneath stacks of forgotten yearbooks and yellowed newspapers, I found an envelope with my birth date written on it.

Inside was a birth certificate.

My eyes scanned the document once, twice, three times. My breath caught in my throat. The name written there wasn’t the name I had lived with my whole life. It wasn’t just slightly different—it was completely foreign.

A different name. A different identity.

I sat on the attic floor for what felt like hours, tracing the letters with trembling fingers, waiting for them to transform into something familiar. But they didn’t. They stayed strange, stubborn, and undeniable.

The truth was simple: the name I had carried all my life wasn’t mine.

That night, I confronted my parents. My father’s jaw tightened as if locking away words he wasn’t ready to share. My mother’s hands shook as tears spilled silently down her cheeks. For the longest time, they said nothing. The silence was louder than any confession.

Finally, in a voice both tender and broken, my mother explained.

I was born to another woman. A woman who, for reasons too complicated and painful for my young heart to fully grasp, couldn’t keep me. She carried me into the world, held me once, and then handed me to the arms of strangers who would become my parents. The name on the certificate was hers—her first and only gift to me.

But my adoptive parents, desperate to make me wholly theirs, chose a new name. They believed it would give me a clean start, a chance to belong without question.

But belonging cannot be manufactured by erasing the past.

For weeks after the revelation, I felt hollow. Was I the person on the certificate? Or the person they had raised? Which version of me was real? I looked in the mirror and couldn’t tell if I was meeting myself—or a stranger who happened to share my face.

The two names followed me like shadows, each tugging at me from opposite sides. The birth name felt raw and hauntingly authentic, like a story I had never been allowed to read. The given name felt comfortable, yet strangely fabricated, like an outfit chosen by someone else. I was caught between them, a person split in two.

And yet, as time went on, I began to see differently. Names are more than labels. They are vessels, waiting to be filled. A name can carry history, pain, or hope—but ultimately, it carries the meaning we choose to give it.

So I made a choice.

I began to carry both names. The birth name became my secret strength, a tether to the woman who gave me life, even if she couldn’t stay. The given name remained the bridge to the family who raised me, the ones who taught me love in their own imperfect way. Together, they created the whole story of me.

Now, when I introduce myself, I no longer hesitate. I speak my name with confidence—not because it was given to me, but because I’ve claimed it. Both of them.

I am the child who was given away, and the child who was chosen. I am the daughter of two names, two lives, two beginnings.

The name that wasn’t mine became mine after all.

Because I chose it to be.