How I went from “Ricky” to “Rich” to “Rik” and now “Riki.”
I was leading a workshop on analyzing media for teachers in June and needed a piece of media for the participants to unpack together. And somehow I came across this ad by Procter & Gamble.
It was perfect! So many interesting production choices to unpack, from the shots to the camera movement to the tone of the narrator. The only problem, it make me cry every dang time I played it.
Of course it’s designed to hit you straight in the feels. And as an Asian-American there was a lot I could relate to.
But just today I realized another reason this hit me so hard: I had been misnamed for all of my adolescent life.
I grew up as “Ricky Panganiban” in my home and among my extended family. But it wasn’t my legal name. On all my records I was “Richard Panganiban.” So that is what all my teachers saw on their student rolls.
From as long as I can remember, I was called “Rich” in school, and thus all of my friends knew me as “Rich.” And then I would go home and be “Ricky” again.
It was a kind of double life, known by one name one in one environment and another name in a different one. But in my heart-of-hearts, I was Ricky.
I remember in elementary school some kids finding out my family called me Ricky and being teased about it all day — “Hey RICKY!” “Hi RICKY!” It was seemingly harmless, but I remember how upset and enraged it made me. It felt like a huge injustice, for them to use my family name in public like that. And to say it with such derision.
It wasn’t until I went to college in LA that I renamed myself “Rik” and felt like my public name matched who I called myself. It felt amazing to go by “Rik” everywhere! I felt like my family identity and my public persona were much closer to alignment.
Fast forward to the pandemic. Like a lot of folks, lockdown gave me time to do some much needed introspection. One thing that changed was that I wanted to go by my original family name. So I started introducing myself as “Riki” whenever I would meet new folks. And it felt amazing.
Now I go by both Rik and Riki, and feel connected to both names. Rik is for professional and other serious arenas, while Riki is for more friends, family and other casual acquaintances.
While this is not a big deal in the larger scheme of things, it’s helped me empathize with folks with much bigger identity issues to navigate, including being gendered corrected. I can’t imagine how awful it would feel if all of your family, teachers, and peers were calling you by a pronoun that didn’t represent who you were inside.
You were also called “Rikitik”
I was one of your teenage friends who met you as Rich, then learned that your family called you Ricky. When you let me call you Ricky, too, it made me feel like I was part of your inner circle, and that meant the world to me.