What’s in a name? I’ve been thinking about that question lately after I found this mug at my parents’ house. I bought it as a teen because I loved the definition even though it’s not how I spell my name.

I’ve been thinking about how I have two names: Kathy and my Chinese name, Lu Wei.

I’ve been thinking about why that’s the case. I was born in the United States; my parents wanted me (and my siblings) to have American, Western names.

Because it would be easier to blend in, easier to remember, easier to feel like you belong.

It was a matter of function, not of meaning.

That’s the opposite of Chinese culture, where choosing a name is a process. It involves research and intention. My mom can dissect the parts of the character Wei. Your name is an identity, a blessing, and destiny.

So when I realized that Kathy didn’t carry the same heft — chosen because it was “short, easy,” my mom says — I went searching for meaning.

There was a period when I thought I could be any variation of Kathy because it didn’t matter — Katherine, Kathleen, Catalina, Kat. (Really, I had Kat embroidered on my band jacket.)

It didn’t strike me then that at the deep core of my name was that it was chosen for people who aren’t Chinese, for people I’d have to interact with for the rest of my life, for the culture I’m meant to join.

My parents have American names, too, which they chose for themselves. (More about my dad, who recently passed, here.) Their Chinese friends know both; their non-Chinese friends usually only know one.

I never thought about why this is. I simply accepted it as a fact of existing in two cultures. Now we call it code-switching.

’A form of resistance’

Afew months ago, a fabulous entrepreneur and social educator I follow, Glo Atanmo, shared a slide deck on her Instagram explaining the “truth behind ‘ghetto’ Black names.”

In the deck, she writes that after liberation from slavery, “Black-sounding names became a form of resistance. Rejecting the western European influences created identities that proved non-conformity.” Think Muhammad, Kareem, and Laquanna.

However, that distinction soon led to discrimination, and “so you’ll see a lot of Black parents who now consciously name their kids ‘white-passing’ names, just to ensure they have a fair future.”

Atanmo writes: “Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, because when it comes to Black culture, there is likely a tie to slavery.”

Her post made me think about my name, and how it’s tied to immigration, the model minority myth, and how though my family wanted to assimilate and not resist. They chose a Western name to help me have a fair future, too.

I wish I could say this is old news. It’s not.

Last year, I heard from college students of color who experimented with sending in job applications with “white-passing” names instead of their real names. Guess what? When they used their white-passing names, they received more responses.

So think about this the next time you see a name that is foreign to you.

Put your prejudices and biases aside because you likely have no idea what that name means to the person it belongs to. That name means a lot.

Like the embodiment of history-struggle-culture-identity-loss-gain-hopes-dreams a lot.

I have grown to own Kathy, and I’m thankful for all the benefits my name has brought me. I bought the Cathy mug because if I could choose a meaning for my name, I wanted it to be this: “genuine… straightforward and truly sincere.”

But a part of me now wonders what my life would’ve been like if my birth certificate said Lu Wei. Would she have had the same experiences?