Name = Identity

So my name is Ephraim right. She has narrated this story to me a million times but basically, my dearest mother was reading the bible before she got into labor with me and during that reading,she came across the name Ephraim and she thought it would  really be a beautiful name for a boy child,my dad agreed. Cool story right?

Anyway so growing up, for some reason, Ephraim has always been a hard name for people to pronounce and spell. I have been called everything from door frame to Ibrahim to Ishmael. It really started in primary school when teachers would ask my name in class and after i say it,i would get the dreaded "please spell it" response. Believe me as a 7 year old,being asked to spell out your name in class when your fellow classmates were not,especially when you have a stutter was the equivalent of being condemned to the pits of hell. Anyway fast forward to teenage-hood, i had gotten tired of being called every name which rhymed with Ephraim except the actual "Ephraim". It was really frustrating because i felt genuinely disrespected. The feeling of disrespect i guess stemmed from the fact that i believed if you could not have the decency to at least try say my name properly,then you have no respect whatsoever for me as a person. So i decided to come up with a nickname for myself,something people would find easy to pronounce,"Ephy",which is basically short for Ephraim.easy right?nope,i still get called all variations of "Ephy" out there.

A name is someone's identity, something that identifies them as a person from billions of other people on planet earth. No matter how difficult to pronounce a person's name is, i believe you should try as much as you can to get it right. You do not have to know how to pronounce it perfectly as the world has a million languages and we cannot know them all perfectly, but its the effort of trying to get someone's identity properly that matters because it shows that you respect them as a unique human being. If someone has to correct you on calling them with the wrong name more than once, then you should really look at the man in the mirror and imagine if someone was to call you Michelle.you would not like that now would you,Michael?


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