Who am I? This question is one I ask almost every day. I could answer it simply of course. Who are you? If someone asks, I immediately answer: Anushka D. After all, it is my name, my identity. It is who I am, isn't it? Delegated to me on the day of my birth, stamped on my birth certificate, it is what I tell people, what people think of when they see me, what they call me to get my attention. I am known by my name.

But what is a name, really? If thought of in the most practical sense, it is a string of words attached to someone's face so that they can be spoken to individually, acted towards individually. It signifies the distinctiveness of the individual. “There is no other ‘Anushka D.' in the world.” How many times have I been told that and what does it mean?

Does it mean that there is no other person with the name of “Anushka D.”? That is certainly not true; there's several in the U.S. So what does that mean? That I am no longer unique if someone else has my name? Does that phrase no longer apply? There is no other “Anushka D.” But what is an “Anushka D.?”

The first time I understood the significance of a name was in 6th grade, when my classmate was caught cheating. She had hid papers with the answers to the test under scratch paper on her desk and had been caught by the teacher. As soon as the test was over, other students began to talk about her. “Cheater,” they called her, “Rule-breaker.” These weren't the words on her birth certificate, of course, but they were nonetheless used to identify her.

Every time someone said her true name, those crude remarks were also words I thought of. I couldn't help it; they were other labels I identified with her. She was a cheater; It was what she had done. It was now a part of her. Her actions helped to shape her identity, to carve the impressions people had of her in the same way someone can be known as a try-hard, a crybaby, a tree-hugger, a dog-lover, or a cat lady.

I realize how much more comprises a person's self than his or her name. Though names signify an individual, they are essentially just words, empty and devoid of meaning until we feed them their identities with our thoughts, words, actions. From the day we are born, we add characteristics to our name; we make ourselves.

Who am I? Anushka D. But who am I? Well, that depends on who you ask. I have touched each person in my life differently, and therefore, for each, I have a different identity. I am a daughter, a granddaughter, a cousin a sister-from-another-mother, a student, a water polo player, a tutor, a hard worker, a couch potato. That is all Anushka D.; that is all me. I am known by my name, and my name is known by me.