No You Did Not Win An Emi, But You Did Win This Scholarship

Sam. A simple name I had to fight for. Sam. A name that means so much more to me than anyone else could possibly comprehend. I didn’t always have this name. I used to be called something else. It didn’t really suit me. I grew up hearing that my mother nearly named me Jordan, and for a very long time I wished that she had. My birth-name was so feminine that it was suffocating. Not that there’s anything wrong with feminine names or femininity. But being a non-binary person who grew up constantly being told by society that I was a girl and I needed to look and behave like such (even though I knew that that didn’t feel right) made it feel almost painful to be constantly reminded that my birth-name translated to “princess”. And so, knowing that my mother had almost named me something that was perfectly androgynous, but didn’t, was upsetting, and I longed for that name: Jordan. But it wasn’t the one I was given. And it didn’t end up being the one I chose for myself either. When I was 13, I finally renamed myself with the name Sam. At first, it started off as just a nickname that came from my initials. S. A. M. I began to ask people to start calling me this instead. And after a couple of years, I realized that it just felt right, and that my old name felt more wrong than ever, to the point where I felt greatly uncomfortable every time I heard it. It was around this time that I realized that I am trans and non-binary, and I decided that Sam would be my actual name. For about five years now, I have been Sam. And for about five years now, I have finally been able to feel comfortable with my own name. Despite this, I unfortunately often still have to deal with people pushing certain assumptions and expectations onto me because of how I look and how my voice sounds. For example, I can’t count the number of times people have called me Samantha because they’ve heard that I go by Sam and I look feminine. My name is not and never has been Samantha, so this has just been a whole new level of confusing misgendering for me. It’s gotten to the point that if people jump to the conclusion that my “real” name is Samantha, I tell them that they’re wrong and that my name is Samwise. (Yup, that’s right, the character from “The Lord of the Rings”.) This is not my actual name, but this is my way of coping and making light of the uncomfortable situation I find myself in when people call me Samantha. Honestly, it’s kind of funny seeing people taken aback by this reply, but I do think that it is actually helpful as it makes people question why they assumed my name is Samantha in the first place. My name is Sam, and it means everything to me. Sam means allowing myself to be authentically me. Sam means self-love. Sam means freedom from expectations society has tried to push onto me.