I changed my name so my teachers could pronounce it. I was only nine years old.
I can still remember the sticky heat of that first morning in Ms. T’s classroom. There was a very slight breeze coming in through the open windows as she started the roll call. I was seven, staring at the flimsy laminated name card on my desk that read “Han, Hyo-In.” When Ms. T got to the end of my fellow students’ last names starting with the letter “G” and reached mine, I saw her eyes narrow at the hyphen and the unfamiliar vowel sounds.
“Hai-o een?” she attempted, her voice high and uncertain.
My throat tightened as I forced my name out.
“It’s Hyo In.”
Ms. T gave me a curt nod, but her lips never quite curved into my name again. She moved on to the next students’ names, pronouncing them without hesitation, and they all answered back without pause.
All week, I watched her scan the classroom for the safest, easiest names: Josh, Caleb, Sarah. Whenever I raised my hand, ready with the answer, Ms. T’s gaze would glide right past me as though my hand was invisible. As the weeks turned into a month and then two and then three, I stopped attempting to speak up in class.
As the weeks turned into a month and then two and then three, I stopped attempting to speak up in class.
At home one evening, I confronted my parents in our living room. I asked them why they had given me a name that was difficult to pronounce.
“Your name isn’t difficult, it’s beautiful. ‘Hyo-In’ means ‘wisdom from dawn,’” my mom said. “It carries our history.”
All I heard, though, were the jagged edges of being “other.” I wanted a name that didn’t echo in silent classrooms.
Two years later, on a cool, slightly hazy morning in Kenya, I introduced myself at my new boarding school as “Melanie.” And no one—not my teacher, my dorm parents, my new classmates or friends—batted an eye, nor did anyone question me. Not a single person asked me how my name was spelled or had to have me repeat it.
On that first day in my dorm, the scuffed floors and chipped doors felt unfamiliar. When I set my belongings down in my room, I noticed tiny initials etched into the wooden post of my bunk bed, carved by generations of students who had slept in it before me. Trying not to look too suspicious, I wandered over to the bulletin board in the study lounge of our dorm. There were colorful posters that said generic things about “Respect” and banners with “Welcome” signs. As soon as I made sure no one was watching me, I removed a thumbtack from the bottom corner of one of the posters, carefully closing my fist around it. That night, after lights out, I took the thumbtack and carved the letters “M H” on the wooden post, going over the letters again and again. And just like that, at the age of nine, I settled into “Melanie” as my new name and identity.
And just like that, at the age of nine, I settled into “Melanie” as my new name and identity.
Over two decades later, beneath the slate-gray skies of London, I introduce myself with ease. I’ve been going by “Melanie” for so long that no one but my parents and grandparents call me by my Korean name anymore. Sometimes, though, I still find myself weighing my two names like stones in each palm, and when—rarely—I hear someone pronounce “Hyo-In” correctly, I swear I can feel the air around me shiver. And in those moments, the hum of Ms. T’s classroom from when I was seven years old fades away, and I remember the quiet power of being seen, being known just as I am.