Why Oluwatomisin?

Why Oluwatomisin? This question came from the boy behind me in my 5th-grade class. "Your name is so long," he continued. He went on telling other classmates how weird my long name was and mispronounced it in all sorts of ways. Growing up I liked my full name, I didn’t think anything was peculiar about it or abnormal. That was until I started attending school. “Why is your full name so long?” I still didn’t know how to answer this. I was always a little stupefied receiving this question. After all, I thought having a long name was just like having a short one. It was just a name. I didn’t see any difference in it, but they sure did. 

I didn’t think it was a big deal having a name that was different from others. For one, there was a story behind it and a reason for it. I was born two months earlier than my expected due date. I came into the world on June 15th, 2004 instead of August 20th, 2004. During my mom’s pregnancy, doctors advised her to terminate because of the toll having a premature pregnancy would take on her. They advised her to consider her life before mine. But my mom, to whom I’m forever grateful, decided to go through with her pregnancy. So there I was, born two months earlier than expected. After everything my mom went through during her pregnancy - the pain, the emotional and physical suffering, and countless doctor appointments - enduring all that, she decided to name me Oluwatomisn, which means “God is all I need” in Yoruba, a language spoken primarily in Nigeria. My mom believes God brought her through the pregnancy and that He was all she needed, which is where I get my name from.

But why is it 12 letters long? It was always hard to answer this question because it is a personal story behind my name. But I don’t think people were asking because it was unique or because of curiosity but because it was different and abnormal to them. My name was like a foreign thing to them. It was semi-obscured from their understanding. When I think of the questions I commonly get because of my full name, a picture of a waterfall comes to mind. All the water flows a certain way and there’s no other direction the water can go in beside the way it is intended for. My name doesn’t fit in the “waterfall.” It takes its own path and goes its own way. It deviates from the rest. But the stream keeps pushing me to stay on the same course as everyone else. But that’s not possible because my name was intended to set me apart and follow its own stream away from the mainstream. And flowing with this stream is what I’m still learning to do. Humans have a deep connection with waterfalls; they visit them and name them. Naming the waterfall is to differentiate one particular waterfall from another. And my stream, my mom, connected with and gave me a forever meaningful name to tell a story and produce my own waterfall. Forever pushing against the mainstream and forging my own. 

Don’t you want to change your name? I’ve received this question so many times - so much so that I started to ask myself. But I stopped hearing “Don’t you want to change your name?” and instead, I heard “If you change your name you’ll be more like us.” To me “Us” was the people in school who were always popular. The ones that had straight hair and fairer skin. The ones that somewhere deep in my mind, I constantly compare myself to. I had darker skin than they did and very different hair than them, which I was aware of early on. I think this was part of why I struggled with my name. I always hated the first day of school, not because of all the new faces and teachers, but because of attendance and reading off all the names. I know this is something teachers have to do, but for some reason, I wish they didn’t have to while growing up. There was always a way I could tell they were getting to my name. There was always a specific pause and stutter almost. That would be when I would raise my hand to avoid getting embarrassed about how they would pronounce it. Or I would email my incoming teachers over the summer to call me by my preferred name Tomi, so I could avoid all the anxiety and embarrassment on the first day. It sounds silly to me now that I am reflecting on it. But in those moments at eight, ten, thirteen, and even fifteen years old I believed it was something I had to do. Sometimes I wish I was more proud of my name, even now. Because there’s a beautiful story behind it, I should be proud of it. Proud of my culture. Proud of my mom. But I reflect on times when the younger me would secretly blame my mom for all the troubles surrounding my name and beg my parents to change it. Thinking about that now makes me wish I could talk to younger me and let them know that it's okay to have something different about them. It's like a highway, everyone is going in the same direction but at some point, they break off into their own lane and exit to get where they need to go. They don’t follow people into another exit so they aren't going through theirs alone. That would be ridiculous; they wouldn’t get to their desired destination. Everyone stays their course to their own lane or exit because that's their exit and it gets them to their destination. They stay confident in who they are and what makes them who they are. Despite others deterring and leaving to other exits. My “exit” is something I’m continuously learning to be proud of, even today - something I’m growing to be more confident of. So why Oluwatomisin? To that I say, why not?