Ava | Is there Significance in Every Name?

Is there significance in every name? Some names are passed down from generation to generation to build belonging in a family. Some names are chosen for their meaning and others are just chosen because they sound cute. No matter the reason why your parents gave you a name, you have the ability to make it fit who you are now.

On this episode of BGF, Ava and Tashaunda discuss Ava's recent name change. One morning she woke up and changed her name! They will discuss meaning, identity, coming into your own, and how to reclaim your power.

 Have you changed your name? Join the conversation on Instagram and let us know. @blackgirlflyofficial

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
[:23] ReIntroduction- My name is Ava
[4:05] Reclaim How you Present to the World
[8:28] Identity Work
[9:20] Reception
[12:24] Reclaiming your Power

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Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Black Girlfriend. | 0:22 | 0:24
I'm Yo. | 0:24 | 0:24
Hello, girl. | 0:24 | 0:25
we don't have to do a reintroduction because my name is Ava. | 0:27 | 0:33
I know you guys are like, what? | 0:34 | 0:35
Who? | 0:36 | 0:36
When? | 0:36 | 0:37
Why? | 0:38 | 0:38
Go ahead, Ava, let them know. | 0:39 | 0:40
Okay, I guess this is about to be what the episode is about real quick. | 0:41 | 0:46
Hello, everyone. | 0:47 | 0:48
Just wanting to reintroduce myself. | 0:48 | 0:50
My name has now been changed to Ava, and there really isn't a long, significant story behind that. | 0:50 | 0:59
people are always so curious and asking me about this, and I'm just like, I just woke up one day and decided to change it. | 0:59 | 1:07
So I guess because that's weird. | 1:08 | 1:10
Seriously? | 1:11 | 1:12
No, I'm going to base this in reality. | 1:12 | 1:14
people say, and I actually just did a training on this. | 1:14 | 1:17
It's so funny that's what I'm now, people say that a person's name is the sweetest word. | 1:17 | 1:22
It's, like, special to them and meaningful. | 1:23 | 1:28
So, like, the fact that you just woke up and decided to change it. | 1:28 | 1:33
I would believe that. | 1:33 | 1:34
If I chose it, I would believe that. | 1:34 | 1:38
But no choice in the matter. | 1:38 | 1:40
This is a true statement. | 1:40 | 1:41
I can look it up for you. | 1:41 | 1:42
no one has a choice in their name because they were not yet born. | 1:42 | 1:46
people who named themselves, there's actually quite a lot of people really like, who like everybody. | 1:46 | 1:54
I did not name myself. | 1:55 | 1:57
You want to get super deep, but I'm like, it really ain't that deep. | 1:58 | 2:02
I find it interesting now because I actually run into a lot of people who don't go by their first name, and that's why I say I do. | 2:04 | 2:12
Think that's common. | 2:12 | 2:12
Just change your name. | 2:12 | 2:13
Yeah, right. | 2:13 | 2:14
you all want to know what the meaning of Tunisha is. | 2:14 | 2:19
Is there a meaning of Tunisia? | 2:19 | 2:20
I felt like mom just made it up. | 2:20 | 2:22
It means born on a Monday. | 2:22 | 2:25
No. | 2:25 | 2:26
I think she was like, oh, such a baby name is Tenisha. | 2:28 | 2:31
That's cute. | 2:31 | 2:31
We're going to go with that. | 2:31 | 2:32
Even more reason why it has even less significant. | 2:32 | 2:37
But that happened, and it did happen. | 2:39 | 2:43
I woke up and said, this ain't. | 2:45 | 2:47
About to be it. | 2:47 | 2:48
No, boy. | 2:48 | 2:49
Okay. | 2:49 | 2:49
But, I mean, I get it. | 2:50 | 2:52
I get people some people really put a lot of weight into the names. | 2:52 | 2:56
I told my boyfriend that I'm dating now. | 2:56 | 2:59
He was like he was shook, first of all. | 2:59 | 3:03
Yes, but then he's one of those people who find names very meaningful, and he named his little sister and things like that. | 3:03 | 3:12
Much younger his little sister than he is ten years. | 3:12 | 3:14
Okay. | 3:14 | 3:15
He really put some thought into the name, and he is the third of his name and his family. | 3:15 | 3:23
I'm like, I get that for some people, but I'm also just not like most people wait to say that lightly. | 3:23 | 3:32
A person like him puts a lot of value in things. | 3:33 | 3:37
Right. | 3:38 | 3:38
Names. | 3:39 | 3:40
I'm also a different kind of person where I could literally get up tomorrow and leave everything in my apartment, and I actually would not care. | 3:40 | 3:49
Yeah, no, sorry, I get that. | 3:49 | 3:50
let me ask you I want to test that theory, though. | 3:50 | 3:53
So what does ava mean? | 3:53 | 3:55
What's the meaning behind Ava? | 3:55 | 3:56
I thought it was cute. | 3:56 | 3:58
wait, I feel like you just ran at her mom saying that she picked Anisha. | 3:58 | 4:04
No, I don't think there's nothing wrong with the way she chose it, but just so easy as she chose it, I can do the same thing. | 4:04 | 4:11
Okay. | 4:11 | 4:12
The name, to me, actually, is very insignificant. | 4:13 | 4:17
It could have been anything. | 4:17 | 4:19
It was the fact that I reclaimed what I want to call myself. | 4:19 | 4:24
To me, this is the more significant. | 4:24 | 4:27
Yeah, go for it. | 4:27 | 4:28
If people ask about the name, I'm like, honestly, all. | 4:28 | 4:32
I have a name list of baby names that I've been collecting years since I was probably 15 years old, because I've always wanted to have a lot of kids, but the names on there are not, like, super deep. | 4:32 | 4:44
I don't know the meaning of them or what have you, but I just picked the name off of this list, and actually, it's just now a very popular name, but it wasn't that popular when I chose. | 4:44 | 4:56
It was not all eight was are ten and below. | 4:56 | 4:58
Exactly. | 4:58 | 4:59
I'm like but it was on the list, and I just picked it, and so really, I think what sparked this journey for me was like a journey of coming into my own, if that makes sense. | 4:59 | 5:12
I was on this journey of trying to figure out, what do I want to look like, right? | 5:13 | 5:18
people would say that's weird and that you just wake up how you look, and the answer is not nowadays. | 5:18 | 5:25
You can put on a whole new face. | 5:25 | 5:26
You could be a whole different skin color. | 5:27 | 5:29
You can do a lot of stuff. | 5:29 | 5:31
I was like, well, who do I want to present myself to the world? | 5:31 | 5:36
it was this whole journey, mostly physical and external appearance, but also some internal as well, and just, like, owning this woman that I'm becoming. | 5:36 | 5:49
Right. | 5:49 | 5:50
on the external, I did many different hairstyles to try to figure out what do I want my look to be? | 5:50 | 5:58
I had always just kind of done what I was doing, like, back when I was growing up, it was like, a big deal to, like, have straight hair, and but that. | 5:58 | 6:10
Was established for you, though, I guess, is what you're saying. | 6:10 | 6:12
You didn't really pick that. | 6:13 | 6:14
Someone just put it on you, and you just kept going with it. | 6:14 | 6:16
Somebody put it on me, and then it was the thing in our culture around good hair and with this long hair, all the things associated with that, and, I mean, I did I just carried that up, and I did that, and then I went natural in about the year you graduated high school? | 6:16 | 6:37
Three. | 6:37 | 6:38
Yes, three. | 6:40 | 6:42
I was probably yeah, you were straight when I went it was when I got to college in seven. | 6:44 | 6:50
seven I've been on this natural hair journey, but I will say that it hasn't really been a natural hair journey, because for the first ten years, at least eight years of that, I was still straightening my hair. | 6:50 | 7:04
I mean, I would flat iron and. | 7:04 | 7:05
Things like natural with no perms. | 7:05 | 7:07
Exactly. | 7:08 | 7:08
I didn't really know how to take care of it. | 7:08 | 7:11
I didn't really know how to do any natural stars or what have you. | 7:11 | 7:14
This is going on a whole hair journey. | 7:14 | 7:16
That's not the point of this story. | 7:16 | 7:18
But it's finding yourself. | 7:19 | 7:20
Exactly. | 7:21 | 7:21
It wasn't until a few years ago when I was really like, well, what do I want to be? | 7:21 | 7:26
What do I want to look like? | 7:27 | 7:28
How do I want people to receive me? | 7:28 | 7:29
Or what have you. | 7:30 | 7:30
I did some experiments on a few different styles. | 7:30 | 7:33
Some failed miserably, lost my edges of the process, my poor baby hairs. | 7:34 | 7:40
Jesus. | 7:40 | 7:41
I think I landed on and I did two different styles for, like, year long. | 7:41 | 7:46
now I'm actually in a transition period. | 7:47 | 7:50
Right now they can't see you, but you're different than how you've been doing it, too. | 7:50 | 7:55
Now it's more curly. | 7:55 | 7:56
Yes. | 7:56 | 7:57
this is a new style that I'm rocking right now, and I'm entering to another transitional period of identity stuff. | 7:57 | 8:04
I say all this to say, like, the name change was just part of that journey. | 8:04 | 8:10
I think people get so fixated on itself and not really understanding the bigger picture around it. | 8:10 | 8:19
I explain it, most times I'm just like, oh, I just changed it. | 8:19 | 8:25
Or like, oh, I was doing some identity work and decided to change my name. | 8:25 | 8:29
actually nowadays, in 2022, where identity is such a huge thing, we got four genders, if you all know. | 8:29 | 8:37
there's now real recognition around people who want to change their name and whether identity and gender and all that stuff, that doesn't apply to me necessarily, but it's around the name change, and that being actually but I think it's the same thing. | 8:39 | 8:56
Like, all these people who are making these decisions, though they're making these decisions in their adulthood when they already have the established relationship, when they already have how people have known them up until that point. | 8:56 | 9:08
I do think it's kind of very similar. | 9:08 | 9:10
the idea is that it's all about really coming out as who you are or who you acknowledge yourself to be at this point in your life. | 9:11 | 9:20
Yeah. | 9:20 | 9:21
And I dig it. | 9:21 | 9:22
The reception has been a little mixed. | 9:22 | 9:25
I think the people who actually know me the least have been the most accepting. | 9:25 | 9:30
They're like, okay, cool. | 9:30 | 9:32
What you want me to call you? | 9:32 | 9:34
Well, for me, it was hard, or it's been hard. | 9:34 | 9:36
Well, guys, I'm going to put this out there, though. | 9:36 | 9:39
She actually changed her name in the middle of last season. | 9:39 | 9:42
Well, I changed it before that, but I wasn't asking people to call me that until Tashanda was in spaces where people were calling me that, and so she wanted to. | 9:42 | 9:57
I'm trying to adapt to whatever space we're in. | 9:57 | 10:00
on the podcast this past season, I was still calling. | 10:00 | 10:03
On the podcast, I'd call her Tanisha, but outside of the podcast, I'd call her Ava. | 10:03 | 10:08
so I was like, it's getting hard. | 10:08 | 10:10
When we had to record, I'm like, I slipped up a couple of times and a few others. | 10:10 | 10:15
that's why I went public with the name change, because it actually was hard for people. | 10:17 | 10:22
I had an assistant at the time. | 10:22 | 10:24
Well, what do they call you? | 10:26 | 10:27
What do they know, you ask? | 10:27 | 10:28
I don't know. | 10:28 | 10:29
I'm reaching out to these people, and I was just like, okay, I got to go public with this because it's confusing people too much. | 10:29 | 10:37
I could keep it clear, but even it was confusing me and it was just too much of work to try to have these two identities. | 10:37 | 10:47
now I mainly go by Ava, but in most of my signatures and things like that, it's just tenisha quotation. | 10:47 | 10:54
Ava Williams for the people who need to see both. | 10:54 | 10:58
Oh, you gave your full government. | 10:58 | 10:59
I think that's the first time you ever gave it. | 10:59 | 11:01
Now you guys can Google her. | 11:02 | 11:04
But the name change. | 11:07 | 11:08
Actually, I did change my middle name too. | 11:08 | 11:10
I just don't go by it. | 11:10 | 11:12
What did you change? | 11:13 | 11:14
Just because I'm curious. | 11:14 | 11:15
What's your middle name? | 11:16 | 11:17
So you're no longer tenisha. | 11:17 | 11:18
Nicole now you are Ava Marie. | 11:18 | 11:21
Ava Marie. | 11:21 | 11:21
Yeah. | 11:22 | 11:22
You've liked Marie since you were a. | 11:23 | 11:24
Kid, just like that name. | 11:24 | 11:26
I was like, no, it was one of your names when you were a kid that you used to play with. | 11:26 | 11:30
Yeah, it's not on the baby name list because it's not a great I mean, sorry. | 11:31 | 11:36
One of my mentors name is Maureen. | 11:37 | 11:39
I do like the name, no offense. | 11:39 | 11:41
I also don't call her name, but for me, it's not on my first name baby name. | 11:42 | 11:49
I think it is a solid good second name, though. | 11:50 | 11:53
Middle name to pair nicely. | 11:53 | 11:55
Ava Marie is the playoff of Ave Maria. | 11:55 | 11:59
And I really love that song. | 11:59 | 12:01
Growing up. | 12:01 | 12:03
it just kind of makes sense, close together. | 12:03 | 12:05
At first, it was weird for me because I was like, what is this? | 12:06 | 12:10
Me physically changing what I call you wasn't an issue. | 12:10 | 12:15
I was more concerned about what it meant about how you felt about who you were. | 12:15 | 12:21
That kind of thing is what I was concerned about. | 12:21 | 12:24
Yeah, that's an interesting point. | 12:24 | 12:26
I mean, I think that everything that I have gone through, everything that I am, is a result of my experiences. | 12:27 | 12:36
I think I'm just on an evolution. | 12:38 | 12:40
I think it is just that for me, a chapter closing of this Way, I was viewing myself more like a victim and, a product of my circumstances and just really, like, owning my part in the narrative, whether that be good or bad. | 12:41 | 13:03
Well, also reclaiming your power right. | 13:03 | 13:05
By doing that. | 13:05 | 13:06
Right? | 13:06 | 13:07
Yeah, that makes sense. | 13:07 | 13:08
It's cool. | 13:09 | 13:10
Me, myself, personally, I can honestly say I said this to you in conversation. | 13:10 | 13:16
I feel like I've led multiple lives because Tashanda eight years ago is completely different from Tashanda today. | 13:16 | 13:24
Right. | 13:24 | 13:24
Or Chanda 15 years ago is completely different from that. | 13:24 | 13:27
I think that we all kind of go in, like, these evolutions of who you are and and you work on it. | 13:27 | 13:34
Right? | 13:34 | 13:34
Like like, in each of those instances, you actively become someone different for different reasons or whatever. | 13:34 | 13:39
I don't think that part wasn't but I never thought about, I guess, having the power or even thinking about it as a part of that change to change your name or something like that. | 13:39 | 13:51
it's kind of it just caught me off crowd. | 13:51 | 13:53
I was like, yeah. | 13:53 | 13:54
I love you. | 13:54 | 13:54
Change it to Beyonce. | 13:54 | 13:56
What? | 13:56 | 13:57
Or Oprah. | 13:58 | 13:59
You know, something like real, like iconic. | 13:59 | 14:02
No, it's just as regular. | 14:02 | 14:04
It's kind of basic. | 14:05 | 14:06
people thought Oprah was kind of basic before she became Oprah, so we don't know yet. | 14:06 | 14:12
Ava could be something like, I want. | 14:12 | 14:14
One of those names where you don't need any other name. | 14:14 | 14:16
Like, you could drop Marie. | 14:16 | 14:18
Right? | 14:18 | 14:19
We don't even need you all. | 14:19 | 14:21
I just want the wood. | 14:21 | 14:23
Ava three letters. | 14:23 | 14:24
I feel like you got to build that, though. | 14:24 | 14:26
It's not about the name. | 14:26 | 14:27
It's about everything that's underneath the name, the person that makes the name. | 14:27 | 14:32
Okay. | 14:32 | 14:32
And Ava coming to you soon. | 14:32 | 14:35
She'll be Ava. | 14:35 | 14:36
Eventually. | 14:37 | 14:37
She'll get there. | 14:37 | 14:38
We're not going to have no other names with that one. | 14:39 | 14:42
Or maybe I'll change it again. | 14:43 | 14:44
Who knows? | 14:44 | 14:45
Poor kid. | 14:46 | 14:47
This was my ava period. | 14:47 | 14:48
Now I'm moving into I know, but. | 14:48 | 14:51
I thought one really funny, cute thing that happened, actually a little girl at our church, shortly after I went public with this name change, she changed her name at church. | 14:51 | 15:07
She also changed her pronoun. | 15:07 | 15:08
I'm still working on that. | 15:09 | 15:10
Okay. | 15:10 | 15:10
I didn't know she changed her pronoun. | 15:10 | 15:12
She didn't tell me that. | 15:12 | 15:13
she changed her name to Evie, which is so cute. | 15:14 | 15:17
I was like, okay, I see with the similarities over here. | 15:17 | 15:20
I hope that I inspired that. | 15:20 | 15:22
But I think she's probably 1213. | 15:23 | 15:28
Absolutely. | 15:28 | 15:28
her parents have accepted that and embraced that. | 15:28 | 15:34
Everyone at our church, calls her that. | 15:34 | 15:37
I just think it's so beautiful just to see, a young person embracing their power like that, and yeah, she just woke up one day and said, she wants her name to be this. | 15:37 | 15:49
I guess you change your pronouns, too. | 15:49 | 15:51
And so I think that's pretty cool. | 15:51 | 15:53
Yeah. | 15:53 | 15:54
Well, I think it's awesome. | 15:54 | 15:55
I think we are in a new day and this is just part of that evolution. | 15:55 | 15:58
I can see a lot more people. | 15:58 | 15:59
I mean, I think a lot of people do it. | 15:59 | 16:01
When you think about, like, the trans community and things like that, it's out there. | 16:01 | 16:05
You can be who you want to. | 16:05 | 16:06
Be, be whoever you want to be. | 16:06 | 16:08
And the latest generation is Jen Alpha. | 16:08 | 16:12
these Gen Z, they going to drive us. | 16:12 | 16:14
They go to give us a run for our money. | 16:15 | 16:16
they don't even like they have so much, I think, ownership over life and how they show up in the world and they have no problems making demands of the world and things like that. | 16:17 | 16:33
And one hand, that is really inspiring. | 16:33 | 16:35
I think the places that we're going to go in the next 100 years because of those generations coming after us is just incredible to think about. | 16:36 | 16:46
Especially, like, thinking back the last hundred years, how far we've come. | 16:46 | 16:49
That's just a side note. | 16:51 | 16:52
That's really cool. | 16:52 | 16:54
I think said it, though. | 16:54 | 16:55
It's all about choosing your destiny. | 16:57 | 17:00
So I want to say welcome. | 17:00 | 17:01
I don't know how our outro is going to sound or intro. | 17:05 | 17:08
I know, but Avis in the building. | 17:08 | 17:10
Maybe that is my intro. | 17:11 | 17:12
Avis in the building. | 17:12 | 17:14
Okay. | 17:14 | 17:14
I'm going to work on that. | 17:14 | 17:15
Until next time. | 17:17 | 17:18
It's your girl. | 17:18 | 17:19
Avis in the building. | 17:20 | 17:21
We can't work on that black girl fly. | 17:22 | 17:26