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The February Journal

No. 07 (2026): To Be—Named: Across Borders

A Situational Timeline of the Names I Go By

EN
  • Joey Chin

Cover image

Figure 1. A still from the movie 富貴逼人 (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1989), showing a subtitle that says ‘Daidi is playing cool.’ © All rights reserved.

This reflexive essay traces the changing meanings attached to names across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Through a personal and chronological account, it examines how names can carry assumptions about gender, family, culture, identity, and belonging. Moving across different linguistic and cultural contexts, the essay reflects on experiences of being named, renamed, misnamed, and addressed through different versions of the self.

Submitted
February 12, 2026
Published
September 28, 2026
DOI
https://doi.org/10.60633/tfj.i07.142
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Categories
Keywords
  • names
  • personal names
  • childhood
  • adolescence
  • identity
  • adulthood
  • autofiction
Cite as

Chin, J. (2026). A situational timeline of the names I go by. The February Journal, 07, 37–49. DOI: 10.60633/tfj.i07.142

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2026 Joey Chin