Zhafira Aqyla filmed herself appearing to ask friends to stop referring to her by her nickname: "I realized that it's me kind of reducing my identity," she said.
Screenshot/TikTok - zhafiraiha
A TikToker appeared to capture the moment she told her friends she wanted to be called by her full Indonesian name instead of the shorter nickname they knew her by.
The creator, a Harvard graduate student named Zhafira Aqyla, filmed herself explaining that she wanted to make this change to take power over her name and not reduce her identity.
In the video, which has received over 2 million views, Aqyla appears to address people who are off-camera, saying in an on-screen caption that they are her friends who had been calling her "Zha" for five years.
She said that starting in 2023 as a new resolution, she wanted to go by Zhafira, and said she had begun asking everyone to call her by that, including her husband.
"This is me taking power of my own name," Aqyla explained. She said the reason she asked people to call her Zha in the first place was that she thought her full Indonesian name would be too complicated for people to say.
"But I realized that it's me kind of reducing my identity, and I feel like that's the colonized person in me wanting to service other people by doing that, and I feel like I don't wanna do that anymore," she continued.
One of the people off-camera said it might take some time for them to adjust, which Aqyla said was OK.
"If you call me Zha, I'm not gonna get angry," Aqyla said. "It's a process for everyone."
As the video ended, one person could be heard saying they'd do their best, while another giggled and said this was the biggest shock they'd ever heard.
The raw moment has fascinated viewers, with some commenters calling Aqyla an inspiration. Some users praised Aqyla's friends for taking it in and being respectful even though they were surprised, while others criticized them for seeming to suggest that her name would be difficult to say, or for acting like it would be an inconvenience for them to switch over.
"It's been a little while and I hope they have respected this for you, you deserve that," one person commented on the video. "It's not a big ask."
People with non-Western names have spoken out before about feeling pressure to change their names, or to adopt a more typically Anglo-sounding name so they could assimilate into Western culture. In 2021, the British actress Thandiwe Newton said she had been going as "Thandie" her entire career because the "W" was thoughtlessly left out of her name in her first acting credit, and announced she would be going by her full name again to reclaim it.
In addition to her TikTok page, which has over 470,000 followers, Aqyla is popular on YouTube, with a channel dedicated to showing her life at home and college that has over 280,000 subscribers.
Aqyla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
