I thought about Anglicising my name when I first began writing, but then I started getting bylines and establishing an identity as a journalist online so it was too late. Even now I still cringe at how foreign my surname sounds - and I hate the place that comes from, because I obviously learned to feel embarrassed by it years ago without realising. I’d also thought about changing my name at school, dropping the first four letters of my name and dragging out the end to make “Elle” - a pretty and Anglo-sounding name. Nothing like my actual name. I also changed my Facebook name to “Tan” for a while as a teen, and I’m forever explaining my name to people as “like Danielle but with a T”. These things might not sound like much - but they expose an inherent shame and perceived unattractiveness attached to having an “other” name. Why, at 13, did I feel that difference so strongly? Why do so many ethnic minorities? Plenty of people have Anglicised names. They help them get by - in work, in the playground, in love, in making friends, etc. I spoke to people that had changed their names to Anglo ones, later changed back and embraced their birth names, people that lost out on job interviews because of their names, people that feel they have a “dual identity” in adopting two names, and people that have compromised and shortened their names so they’re more palatable to the Western tongue. I also found plenty of research to back up how differently people without Anglo names are treated, showing how complex the issue is - it’s not as simple as just reclaiming your old name. See snippets of my long read here, which I’d love for you to click through and read online. Been working on this story for a long while, so it’s great to see it go up! This one is for The State of Racism series run by @nmozz on @metro.co.uk #anglo #namechange