“What’s in a name?” Juliet Capulet feels that it is merely a name and has no further significance, but I think I could challenge that. My parents decided to identify me with five Hebrew letters that in Israel were deemed beautiful. Here, however, in the “melting pot,” my name was “unique.” It was one of the first things I became self-conscious of. “A.L.M.O.G.E., with a long ‘O’, a hard ‘G’, and a silent ‘E’.  It was, to put it mildly, unheard of in America, and was accompanied by the other facets of my identity that all reminded me of who I was and the place that I felt that I did not own here as a little girl. 

I did not quite know who I was at the tender age of six, but my American peers seemed to have an idea. “Don’t you wish you celebrated Christmas?”, they would ask. “A plaster? Don’t you mean a band-aid?” they would say and proceed to laugh. Almoge was the one whose parents had funny accents, who had to stay in and take English learner tests, and who did not believe in Santa Claus. I knew this at a very young age, yet there was no external force that made me self-conscious about it until “Almoge” began to taunt me. At a certain point, my American friends started asking if they could call me Ally because it was just “easier” to pronounce. The simple sound of my name was bringing me relentless distress. By the end of Second grade, everybody knew everybody’s name but I was merely the girl with a weird one. 

I realized this, yet my naivete told me to conform. I let them call me Ally because it sounded more American. I pushed “Almoge” away as far as I possibly could and insisted on solely talking in English, utterly disregarding my first language that my parents had so profoundly wanted me to retain. I began to partake in all of the fun America infamously offered, whether that meant knocking on strangers’ doors and pleading for treats or burning marshmallows on July 4th, I would do it as “Ally.”

There was nothing wrong with becoming accustomed to American culture. I had just let it consume me along with every aspect of my life. I had let it replace who I was with everything that America made me feel like I should have been.

It was when I could no longer communicate with my family at ease. When I glanced at the cultural necklace my grandmother got me sitting in my jewelry box ever since I had received it. When I could no longer distinguish Almoge in a crowd and rather found her shaping herself to fit the mold of American normality underneath the guise of “Ally”. I had resented Almoge as much as I could, but still, I was not able to get rid of myself entirely. I could not change who I was or where I came from, what language I spoke first, or the name I was given at birth. 

Juliet was wrong. Almoge is not only a name. It is a name that encapsulates where I came from and who I am amidst American society's pressure to change it. But regardless of the strides I made, that identity could never be diminished. That which we call Almoge by any other name would change who she was entirely.