My Name by Urbi Suhan

My Name

The origin of my name comes from Bangladesh, which my mum said means ‘Earth’. Or as my sister loves to say, means dirt. However, one aspect of my name which always baffles everybody is the fact that it is actually a nickname. My legal name is Fabbiha Kifayat Azad Suhan (Urbi). I know, they have nothing in common. Yet I never use Fabbiha for anything other than official documents and exams. However, in primary school, the other kids loved to merge both my names in order to create Furby. Yes, one of those horrible looking toys from the 90’s. That’s what I apparently represented. If it wasn’t Furby, for the 18-years of mispronunciation that I had succumbed to, Herbie was also a fan favourite. It was during these times that I wanted to simply swap the first two letters of my name to form Rubi instead. I believed it would fit into the area I lived in a lot more and be more socially acceptable. My mum liked the name Urbi from the start because she found it short and sweet, whereas my uncle confirmed it because in our culture, there tends to be an elder who approves each name. She found it in her trusty book of baby names. But before Urbi, there was the possibility of names such as Yamin, Wasif and Nafim as my initial scan declared that I would be a boy. However, the older I get, the more I enjoy having an unusual name because it’s unique, and so far, one of a kind. Another thing I always loved about my name is the fact that babies and children could never pronounce the ‘R’ in my name, because it always sounded cute when they called me Ubi. It was a quality that my name always had, because the kids could pronounce every other name in the family quite easily. My goal for university was to be able to introduce myself and my name properly, which has been a success in some part. Hearing my name said correctly was a shock at first, and sometimes I’d forget to respond because it was something uncommon. But now it fills me with pride to hear my name be pronounced properly, or at least attempted with full intention. Although, even at university, a new version of my name has been born, in the form of Orbi. Now this I can’t blame since there was literally a Pope called Urbi et Orbi, so I suppose it almost makes sense. It is still incorrect, but I let it slide most of the time because it’s exhausting having to correct my name several times to the same person and still see them look spaced out with absolute confusion. One minor thing I can’t stand is when people roll the ‘R’ in an attempt to sound somewhat cultural when saying my name. It makes no sense to me because I can’t physically roll my tongue anyway. Nevertheless, here I am, 19 years later, as Urbi, the one and only.