All my life—in addition to being asked how it was possible that I was Jewish—I was asked if Dani was my real name. Yes, I would say. It took too much out of me to explain. Sometimes I would add that I had never thought of myself as Daneile, not once, not even as a child. I never answered to it. But was this true? Try as I might, I couldn’t ask the child I once was what she understood about herself, in the grammar of her being, before the rules of her language set in.
Mildly relatable here - except in my case, the name I go by - my birth certificate name - is more commonly a diminutive nickname, and I’ve answered a similar question forever! To the point where at least one teacher told me I was wrong about my name being my whole name.
