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What My Name Says About Who I Am
Name changes can be an act of self-preservation and confirmation in how we show up in the world — and on paper
I became Mia Nakaji Monnier in college. I didn’t change my name so much as reveal more of it. While I’d always gone by Mia Monnier before then, the rest of my name appeared on all of my official documents: Mia Gabrielle Nakaji Monnier, a combination of Japanese and French, reflecting both of my parents. In college, I learned that my face alone rarely said enough about who I was. On campus in Vermont, a White roommate asked why I “acted more Asian” than I was. Studying abroad in Kyoto, I felt like crying with gratitude anytime someone recognized me as haafu, mixed-race Japanese, the daughter of a Japanese mother.
I learned to supplement my face with as much information as possible—constant preemptive disclaimers. When people accepted my words without surprise or scrutiny, I was relieved, but I also felt selfish and needy, taking up so much time to explain myself. Adding Nakaji into my public name was meant to be a shorthand, a clue that might save me the trouble, at least when I applied to jobs at Asian American nonprofits or wrote an article justifying my own identity.
Now, more than a decade later, I’m engaged to a man whose race I recently realized I always describe as “like me, mixed” — only his mom is White and his dad is third-generation Japanese American, a descendant of the World War II concentration camps. He has a Japanese last name, one I like, that I could take.
Every time I filled out a form in Japan, I had to decide in which order to write my names, and each time I used kanji, I knew it was a small act of rebellion that would lead to a prolonged conversation about my identity.
Whether or not I take it depends on what I want my name to say. Do I want a fully Japanese name? Do I need to claim my fiancé through my name, or do I want to keep the names that tie me to my parents?
Through names, we reveal ourselves to the world. For those of us who are mixed race or otherwise between cultures, deciding how to…
