My name is not my name Book / Publication / Landmark Writing

My name is not my name is a 2023 personal narrative zine by Chinese-New Zealand illustrator Beth Tianxin Xia that explores the heritage, culture and shifting meanings of her name. Subtitled The Journey of a Name, the zine follows a timeline of Xia’s name from her birth in Beijing as ‘Xia Tianxin 夏天心’ to her use of ‘Beth Xia’ in Aotearoa She details moments of mispronunciation, and confusion, and laments the loss of her birth name, investigating the tension and multiplicity of naming conventions. The zine won Best Narrative Zine Runner-Up in the 2023 Auckland Zinefest.

The zine is presented in a traditional A4, eight-page folded format. Through doodle-style illustrations and short anecdotal text, Xia chronicles her name from birth to the present and spans the geographic locations of Mainland China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Aotearoa. The design style is visually simple and playful. Iconography is also used in the zine to reflect name meanings and different conventions of surname placement - Xia symbolises her birth name as its literal meaning with an icon of a summer sky and a heart, changing the sequence of these icons to reflect different conventions. My Name is not my name concludes with an open-ended question about the status of Xia’s name as she ponders whether to decolonise her name and return to ‘Xia Tianxin 夏天心’ or completely change her legal name to ‘Beth’ to avoid confusion. Though only eight pages, the zine recounts a succinct and emotive journey of Xia’s name, using personal anecdotes and simple illustrations to emphasise the overpowering Western influence on naming conventions.

In a 2023 personal email exchange with Jennifer Cheuk, Xia commented on the unexpected universality of My Name is not my name: “Someone messaged me on Instagram to buy a copy…I mailed it to her and got a written postcard and her own name zine in return! I didn’t expect such a personal thing to be so universal”.