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My Name is Dima

My parents decided to name me Dmitry, after one of my ancestors. He had a Jewish name, Moti, but Yiddish speakers pronounce this name differently (not exactly the way I do, as a native Hebrew speaker) and it sounds very close to Mitya, the "standard" Russian nickname for all Dmitries.

They decided to give me a Russian name because my family, like most other Jewish families, was a victim of violence and discrimination. Most of my family was murdered during the Holocaust, one of my grandmothers had a scar from a Nazi bombardment, and and one of my grandfathers was exiled to a ghetto within the USSR. But the widespread antisemitism was not just a side-effect of the war: it was there before the war, and did not go away. My mom says everyone in my family had to work harder and study harder than non-Jews to earn their spot, and the discrimination was present even in high ranks. My grandfathers worked for the government as engineers (and managers of engineers). One of them had a Jewish name (Isaac) and couldn't hide his ancestry even after he fled from Ukrain to the less-antisemitic Moscow. My other grandpa, who was more patriotic, took my grandma's not-so-distinguishly-Jewish last name when they married, and gave his daughters Russian names.

Quite ironically, my family immigrated to Israel when I was a baby, and Israel is a pretty racist country (even among Jews). The situation is worse in the periphery, where poverty, crime and lack of education meet educated "fresh meat" with a foreign accent. I no longer have to defend myself today, but I still see this racism here and there.

In 4th grade, my art teacher took a maternity leave and the substitute teacher, who really liked my drawings, asked me if it's OK if she calls me "Dima". She said a student of hers, a Dmitry in another school, asked her to do that, and she wondered if I'd like that too. I hated how non-Russian people struggle with my name, and everyone called me Dimitry, Demitry or something of that sort, so I said "yes" without thinking too much. I was a shy and quiet kid, and fellow students heard my name mostly in art class, where I shined. Several months after she asked me the question, pretty much everyone who knew me called me Dima, and I started to ask people in other circles, like my trumpet teacher, to call me Dima.

It took several years until the word "Dima" had some special meaning to me, and became something I identify myself with. Around the age of 15, I started wearing buttoned shirts, shaving, etc', and in my mind, "Dima" was the "new me": I made friends, developed confidence and became a new person really. By the time I was 18, there was no going back and I was Dima. To this day, the name "Dmitry" brings back many bad memories and connotations, even when it's not used to refer to me.

I think it was around the age of 24 when I decided to officially change my name to Dima. I worked in Tel Aviv, lived nearby, and that's where my (Israeli, educated, high income) milieu was: Dmitry was gone during the week, and appeared briefly when I visited my mom in the weekend. She calls me Dmitry to this day, but she understands: she goes by the two-syllable shortened form of her name, too, out of convenience in a Hebrew-speaking environment. Sometimes, people who see my name before they hear me speak (or see me) ask me if they should call me Dmitry because they know some Dmitry who insists on that, or because they need my name exactly as it appears in my ID. I also have some trouble in airports, because my photo is super old (I was 15kg heavier then), and the Ministry of Interior put some attachment on page 6 ("this person has legally changed their name ...") instead of updating the first page of my passport, so I don't look like me and have a different first name. 98% of the time, the name situation is under control and everything is fine, thanks to this name change.

My wife and I are talking about starting a family, and I don't know how to start choosing a name. Names are a big deal, and I don't want to mess up.