Dainah Destiny Moore is my name—at least, I thought it was until one June morning, when my mother walked in my room and told me, "We're changing your name." She then walked out, giving no explanation, as if a drastic change to my life wasn't happening.
Once she woke me up to this information and left, I wasn't too far behind. I couldn't be anymore confused by this decision. I followed her into the cot, where my father was sitting watching TV. With my confused look on my face, my dad laughingly said, "We're changing your name, Dainah!" As he said that, I thought to myself, "This is a joke—they can't be serious."
My mother, on the other hand, told me seriously that it was not a joke. I asked sarcastically, "What—y'all don't like my name no more?" My mother, still serious, and father, still with a joking face, said, "Nope, we don't, so we're changing it."
I then started my many questions as to what made this decision come about after 17 years of my life, only two months from my adulthood! I asked, "What are you changing it to? What made you come to this decision? Do I not have a say in this?"
Growing up, my parents and family were very religious. I grew up in a family of seven—my parents, four siblings and me. All five of us kids grew up at church and are still religious to this day.
The answer behind changing my name was simply in the Bible—it's a story of a women named Dinah who started destruction and her brothers killed a whole city over her. My extremely religious parents felt as though 17, almost 18 years later, that my future would hold destruction in it, and they didn't want that for me so they decided on changing my name. With this plan in mind, I thought they would at least have an idea on what they wanted to change my name to. Of course, I asked what my new name was going to be, desperate and anxious to find out, only to hear them say, "We're not sure yet." That was the last thing I expected to hear. Why didn't they know this before I was born? Their answer again—"We're not sure"—showed that they just knew now they wanted to do it.
Why shouldn't I be able to decide? My mom still felt the same way after my rampage on what rights I should be able to have and told me the only decision I had was deciding what my name is, because fortunately they couldn't decide. Which is how Zyaire came about.
As a child, I already had name confusion, because my childhood name was Destiny. Destiny is my middle name, but my family and friends called me by that. That was another reason why I didn't see the point in changing my name; people didn't even use it. I wasn't called Dainah until middle school, when I decided I wanted to embrace that name. (Plus, teachers called that name out on the attendance sheet, too, so the class heard it.) The confusion started when some of my friends from elementary school still knew me as Destiny and my middle school friends met me as Dainah. If I got a dollar for every time someone asked me, "So is your name Destiny or Dainah?" I'd be on the Forbes list by now. I went all through middle school and high school being asked that same question. So when I graduated, I finally felt relief knowing that in the next chapter of my life I'd just be known by one name: Dainah!
On that June morning, that dream went down the hole because now instead of being asked, "Is your name Dainah or Destiny?" I'm asked, "Is your name Dainah, Zyaire or Destiny?"
This time I'm not sure what to tell people. The saga will never end.
