Truth

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 I actually don't like my name in English that much. Cheyanne, my first name, is the product of a compromise between my mother and my father. He wanted to name me Anne after, I swear, half the women in his family. My dad's family is old school English, and all the women were either named Katherine, Anne, Jane, or Elizabeth. The names have gotten exactly no more creative since the ancestors crossed on the Mayflower (and I'm not kidding when I say Dad's family has literally been here that long).

My mom detested the name Anne and said it was too white, whatever that meant. She wanted to name me Cheyenne after Cheyenne, Wyoming, the city where my parents met at the Frontier Days Rodeo. To keep the peace and still get his way, my dad proposed naming me Cheyanne. My mom agreed to this. However, he wasn't paying attention and didn't think my mom would fill out paperwork without him. She did and gave me the middle name Xiomara after Mom's identical twin sister, my favorite aunt. I prefer Xiomara and wish I could go by it instead, but my mother laid down the law early on: we are not a nickname family. We are not a 'go by your middle name' family- "if we wanted to call you that, we would have made it your first name" she said to us, over and over. So, Cheyanne I am. Except in Spanish Class. In Spanish Class, I am the infanta- the powerful female child.

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