How my name learned to bend

I have two names.

One is the name my parents gave me. It is unique, rarely pronounced correctly the first time, shaped by restlessness and a constant urge to escape. This name grew up in the Philippines, where stability was never guaranteed and adaptation mattered more than certainty. It knows life in the shanties, godforsaken public transportation, and incomes stretched until pockets bled. This name is a product of grit, endurance, and hard work that continues without being seen. It believes that effort was necessary, not necessarily rewarded.

The other is the name Germany knows me by. I packed it alongside two suitcases and a dream. I noticed how it changed when people said it: shortened, softened, reshaped into something easier to pronounce, something more palatable to foreign tongues. It bends and breaks to the shape of the mouths that speak it, becoming easier to accept. I let it. I told myself this was integration: becoming legible without insisting on being fully understood. This name learned to speak carefully, stay in its lane, and wait for its turn.

Article continues after this advertisement

A name is a fertile battleground for repeated negotiation. Each introduction asks how much of myself I am willing to translate, and how much inconvenience I am allowed to cause before acceptance turns into impatience. Each small compromise appears harmless, but enough repetition turns it into instinct.

In sociology, Bourdieu would call this entering a new field, a social space governed by unspoken rules. Who speaks without hesitation? Who assumes their place before entering the room? Who belongs without having to prove it? The field was indeed polite, but far from fair. Some names arrived already laced with the sweet scent of legitimacy. Others, like mine, had to earn it again and again.

This became clearer to me in recent months. I met people who treated opportunities as logical and expected steps in their careers, their confidence rooted not only in competence but also in familiarity. They spoke the language of the field natively. Its rules and currencies had been taught to them early, alongside piano lessons, ski holidays, and conversations about wine and cheese. Their ease of doing seemingly mundane things was not simply a personality trait; it was an inheritance, if not a birthright. They inherited it before they knew it had a name. Meanwhile, I carry decades of gap in cultural and social capital that may never be fully closed.

I understood this in theory. I had studied sociology. I had been living abroad for almost two years. I was learning the language, the references, and the codes. But knowing does not translate into ease. Some forms of confidence cannot be acquired through study. They are taught and absorbed early.

Article continues after this advertisement

My relationship with the field is different. I constantly think about stretching my last 50 euros across the month. I decline invitations, knowing a single evening could cost a tenth of my monthly allowance. I measure every piece of work I do, aware that mistakes feel riskier without a safety net. I was grateful for every opportunity, not realizing that gratitude itself could mark me as an outsider. Where others moved comfortably, I moved attentively, knowing that one misstep might undo everything.

That’s when I learned that inequality shows itself in something as quiet as comfort.

When others speak, it sounds like participation. When I do, it sometimes feels like a whisper of representation, not only of myself but also of where I came from. My name carries a whole geography. The Philippines enters the room with me as an object of observation, rarely as a voice of authority.

Article continues after this advertisement

I tried hard to adjust. Even my name learned to bend. I mimicked how others asserted their voices without apology. In Bourdieu’s terms, I tried to recalibrate my habitus. But habitus does not disappear. It returns under pressure: in the reflex to be grateful rather than demanding, to hesitate rather than assume, to shrink rather than take up space. What lingers is the feeling of being almost enough, capable yet provisional, as though one’s place must always be earned.

I have two names, but lately, I have been returning to my first. People have started calling me by it again. It feels like unlearning, like shedding the parts of myself shaped only to fit. Perhaps one day, this name will feel at home in every room, or field, it enters without needing to bend. Even if it never does, I am beginning to wonder whether belonging is something to wait for at all.

Maybe it is something to claim.

—————-

Jokkaz San Pedro Latigar, 29, is an international student in Germany.