When I was younger than I am now, I never thought a day would come that I would appreciate my identity and the uniqueness of it.

I was in pry school and felt so much shame for bearing my name.
You see my Parents didn’t think it wise to give me an English name and in those days

It wasn’t fashionable bearing tribal names, what’s worse, you have other kids making fun of your names bcs it didn’t make you sound posh! How could being called Tonbra be fashionable? Or Tamara?
They found ways to make fun of your name by associating it with something as silly

as “Torn bra” or “ so you are a bra ( asin brazierre: an undergarment work by women to make their breasts perky and protect it from being jiggly.).
Having gone through an onslaught of deliberate misspelling and miss pronunciation as well as incessant annoyance, I decided it was

best to hide my identity while in secondary school. I successfully did that from JSS 1-3 by adopting a shortened form of my full name inorder not to recieve an unnecessary mischievous distortion of spelling and pronunciation. I considered Secondary school as a beginning of a new

Era of acceptance. “What better way to be accepted than ensuring you are not the butt of jokes and mischief” I thought to myself.
But in SS1 I had an awakening of some sort that made me resolve to increase my name somewhat to not just a 3 letter word, but a 5 lettered

Representation of 40% of what my name is. It had a nice ring, my surname was quite exotic and my name uncommon. You hardly heard so many people bear my name. I was the only bearer of my name in a school where there were as many Joseph’s and Mary’s as they were Tunde’s, Funmi’s,

Kemi’s, and Tosin’s. At this point, I began to relish the idea of being unique and the idea of blending in lost its appeal on me. It felt good to know I was the only one in school known by my name, so to add flavor to it, by SS3, I decided to have my full name and identity on

Display. At this point it didn’t matter to me that anyone would make fun of me and I didn’t care bcs I was different from others and I began to be in touch with my cultural identity. “It was the only identifier of who I was and my heritage, so why not flaunt it?” I thought.

But at that point came an obstacle; The meaning of my name. Bcs whenever I am asked what my name was and I mentioned it, after the initial “it’s such a lovely name”, “I’ve never heard it”, “wow such a unique name”, “lovely to the ears” next question which usually follows is

“Are you Nigerian” in which I proceed to tell them where I’m from in Nigeria and the next question is “what is the meaning?”. The original meaning of my name is in itself isn’t annoying, it is the response that follows taht made it annoying. It is important to note that the

Response is usually from a particular gender who make it their life’s mission to sexualize and make lewd and irritating comments, so I decided to add a touch of God factor to the name to remove every need to be unsavory and lewdness from it. At this point I achieve my goals and

I am happy.

But why am I making this thread? To address an issue with a perception of a large percent of humans, whether educated or not. It is always RIDICULOUS to make fun of something you are not used to or do not understand. In life, you will always come across new and unusual

Experiences, those experiences are not new to the people who share them to you and it is quite offensive when you decide to make fun of those experiences bcs you haven’t had them.
We are a new generation of people who can propel a change in our society. What use is your

Exposure and education when all you do is allow your ignorance make you a bully?
It was always annoying and depressing when people made fun of my identity markers like my name, it was part of the things that created a self esteem issue with me. I had problems socialising bcs of

This for the longest of time and it wasn’t the best feeling at all.