My Name

"I always felt so embarrassed by my name... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are," said Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Namesake. My voice, before I had a mouth to speak, was formed here. Had my mother not picked up that book on that fateful day, perhaps I would have never been born. In a way, I have two women to thank for my name, two people who created my voice, my mother, and a British-American author who wrote a book that I would only read years later…

 In 2003, in her Sun-terrace New York City apartment with sage-green walls, my mother, Rupa Krishnamurthy, read The Namesake in a day. She told me that she had never read a story that so resonated and personified her own experience as a 2nd generation Indian-American. It was her favorite book, next to The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and Midnight Children by Salman Rushdie.

“Nikhil,’ she thought, ‘that’s what I’ll name my son’. Mind you, she wasn’t even dating anyone. She was no longer dating her high school boyfriend, Michael Joseph, her Israeli college boyfriend Ron, or her medical school Sri Lankan-American boyfriend Murali. But this was a game she told me she liked to play. To forecast her life in such a very specific way. It seemed contradictory in the way - there she was - an Ivy League educated physician, embarking on her career as an eye surgeon, yet she was contemplating children. That was the funny way my mother’s brain worked.

 In the summer of 2004, She met a 4th generation Chinese-American boy from Hawaii, a month before he had started his residency, (they had been born the same year, but he had taken a gap year), and around five years later, a boy named Nikhil Joshua Kaleo Wong was born in Honolulu Hawaii, on a Tuesday in March.

My name had always been something of an oddity. It was by far the hardest of my three siblings' names to pronounce. And I had heard lots of strange and uncouth pronunciations over the years. /nɪkhil/, or /nɪkhɛl/, or nɪkɑɪl, often an uncle or a coach would have such a hard time pronouncing it, so I would often just say “I also go by Nick”. My mom had chosen the name Nikhil with the idea that I could “just go by Nick” if I wanted it to. None of my friends referred to me as anything other than Nikhil, and it was the coaches and strangers who knew me by my nickname. I was shaped by that name, shaped by the contours of its syllables on other people's tongues. Hawai’i, although being very diverse, tends to lean towards Anglicized names. I was unique in that, and some bit of attention was placed on it, weighing a bit on its six letters. My mom could’ve named me Joshua. Before she read The Namesake, that was a primary candidate in her brain, which would later become one of my middle names. A name like Joshua and people don’t ask questions, a name like Joshua and people don’t ask what language it’s derived from, or what it means (derived from Hebrew, “God’s deliverance”, as with many Christian names). If I had the name, Joshua, I would be invisible in a way that I could never be as Nikhil. Things would be different.

One evening, when I was maybe about five years old, I asked my mom, maybe for a school project or just out of my youthful curiosity, 

“Mommy, what does my name mean?”

“Your name means ‘complete’ in Sanskrit-.”

“Mama, what’s Sanskrit?”

“Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language that is thousands of years old. So your name means ‘complete’, like complete in the family, complete in your identity, with both the Chinese and Indian sides of you together.”

In The Namesake, the main character, Nikhil or Gogol, struggles with themes of self-discovery, and finding his identity as an Indian American. It’s somewhat ironic that the literary character that is my literal namesake, struggled with the same challenges of identity as I did growing up. 

I was a weird kid. My leading theory on why that came to be, was that I was thrust forward by my parents, without finding any real direction for myself. I had friends, but I was always struggling to find which groups I belonged to, a vague picture of who I wanted to be. I didn’t feel like I fit anywhere. When I read the Namesake, it put to words what I had been feeling for a long time. That sense of longing to fit with a group of people, for the book’s protagonist, that was either his Bengali or American side, manifested itself as his name change, shortly after college, as he went from the name his father gave him, Gogol, to a new one, Nikhil. Gogol, as the book continues to refer to him, struggles to find who he wants to be, his relationship with his white girlfriend, Maxine, and brings a sort of dysphoria as he compares the life of her family with his. My struggle with my identity comes from the internet. A very large part of my middle school years was spent online. The internet, apparently, is not a very good place to develop your sense of self. I spent God knows how many hours on YouTube, often to the detriment of my grades. 

My father’s family has been in Hawaii for at least 4 generations, and it’s a curse of immigration that some traditions get lost over time. Even my great-grandparents couldn’t speak Chinese fluently, and all their descendants had to learn via outside sources. 

“No, no… Zhèn Yí is a girl's name!” announced our Chinese housekeeper, with her pageboy-styled haircut, oversized t-shirts, and shorts, affectionately called Aunty Bing by us, the woman who helped my mother cook meals on the weekdays when both my parents were working. It came as a surprise to me that she was the one who gave me my Chinese name, and I think it came as a bigger surprise that the Chinese name that my parents had given me, which was my grandfather's name, was incorrect. 

My parents, who were only asking for a Chinese name for my brother, then asked her for a correct Chinese name for me. Taking a 3 x 5 index card, and a pen, she paused for a while and thought deeply. She neatly wrote the characters and Pinyin translations of my Grandfather’s (incorrect) Chinese name. Huáng Zhèn Yí, which she told my parents was a feminine name, one that they would later use for my little sister’s Chinese name. Then, she wrote little arrows denoting what each character meant. She then rewrote the first two characters underneath my Grandfather’s name, but then, instead of Yí, she wrote the character Xīng, with nine strokes. 

She told my parents (very seriously), that it meant prosperity and upwards momentum. Aunty Bing took certain things very seriously. She was very particular about anything that had to do with cultural etiquette - she was adamant about not accepting any birthday presents late because it was considered inauspicious in Chinese culture. As such, when asked to select my Chinese name, Auntie Bing carefully weighed the astrology, numerology, my family name, and the significance of the characters in contemplating my name. To her, even though it wasn’t particularly important to my parents, giving me my Chinese name was a big honor. Those characters she chose were a forecast of who I would grow to be, and who I strive to become. Thinking about it now, there were 3 women who named me, three women who made me a little part of who I am.

Fortuitously, my middle name Kaleo actually translates to “The voice”. Many people in Hawaii, even if they aren’t Native Hawaiian themselves, still have Hawaiian names or middle names. My parents wanted me to have a Hawaiian name, to ground me to the place where I was born. Wherever I choose to go, there will always be a residual piece of Hawaii within me, of the place I grew up. My voice is the most valuable aspect of my identity. It’s the talent that is entirely unique to me, sure there are people better at sports or academics, but there is no one with my perspective and voice. That was what drew me to writing. It serves as an outlet for all my ideas, and a vessel to share my perspective. As with most of my self-discovery, finding my voice is a constant process. Part of developing my voice was just being confident in it, not doubting my choices, and not writing the essay or poem that I think I’m “supposed” to write, rather the one that seems most true to me. My middle name seems to have forecast my life the most, seemingly foretelling my journey as a writer from before I was born.

Some names have a future-telling quality. I don’t know why, but it seems to be true. Perhaps parents naming their children reflects how they will raise them, and what values they will instill in their child. Or their hopes and aspirations for them. Or the cultures they wish for them to embrace. Indian. Chinese. Hawaiian. American. Or an amalgamation of it all.

Nikhil Joshua Kaleo Wong, or Huáng Zhèn Xīng, roughly translates to… “Nikhil Kaleo” (A Harmonious or Balanced Voice). “Joshua” (Guided by Determination and Moral Strength). “Huáng Zhèn Xīng” (Aspiring to renewal and prosperity). I didn’t know that my name contained such depths, like a title for a king, bestowed upon me by the many voices of my past, acting as a roadmap for my future. And it feels right.