When she was growing up, Swastika Sah, 26, didn’t realize there was anything potentially “controversial” about her name. That’s because where she was born in Nepal, there wasn’t. “Growing up in Nepal, swastika was seen pretty much everywhere — on every doorstep, when someone gets married or you buy a new car or whatever it may be,” Sah tells TODAY.com. “My parents and a lot of people in South Asia always associated swastika with good fortune and well-being.” According to Smithsonian Magazine, the swastika symbol has been used by multiple cultures — Native American, Greek, Buddhist, Hindu — for thousands of years. Then anti-Semitic German groups began adopting it in the early 20th century. Today, the overwhelming majority of Americans connect the swastika with the rise of Nazi power — and it is still used by white supremacist organizations today. But in their small, isolated, religious Nepali village of Jankapur, Sah’s parents only knew of the swastika’s positive, Hindu meaning, which is why they gave the name to their daughter. It was only after her family moved to Texas in 2008 that Sah started to notice that people had a reaction to her name. “Any substitute teacher in elementary school would stop when my name would come up. I thought they were just having a hard time pronouncing it,” she says. It wasn’t until Sah was 13 that she fully realized the historical link between her name and World War II. “I was shocked,” she says of her moment of realization. “I always associated it with good fortune and well-being and Ram and Sita and religious history.” Sah didn’t receive negative feedback for her name at school. People would pause and perhaps ask questions, but they would listen to Sah’s explanation. “My teachers, my classmates and everybody was so understanding, and I’m so incredibly grateful for that,” she says. On the flip side, Sah is understanding of people who feel triggered by her name and it’s negative connotations. She mentions ride-share drivers who have canceled based on her name, as well as store employees who said unkind things. But when she took on a client-facing role at work and her manager asked her to change her name to “Swas” to “avoid offending some clients.” Sah wasn’t upset. “I’m more than happy to do that because I very much understand the context that I live in today,” she says. More often than not, she says, people have been generally understanding and approach her “with curiosity rather than judgement.” On August 8, Sah decided to take a big swing and create an Instagram post about her name. In the caption, she wrote, “Over the years, I’ve gone by Swas, Swazzy, and yes, Tikka as my nicknames, and I love my nicknames. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the solution isn’t to hide parts of your identity because they’re misunderstood. It’s to create opportunities for learning and education.” Sah admits that she was “100% nervous” to post her video. But given that she now lives in New York City among a diverse group of people, she is eager to own her identity. “It was very relieving and very fleeing to put the video out there,” she says, adding, “It’s also a great icebreaker, right?” This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY: Maria Canals-Barrera Raised Generations of Disney Channel Kids. This Is Her Story Rob Gronkowski Reveals He Played Matchmaker for Julian Edelman at Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce’s Wedding Travis Kelce Breaks Silence on Wedding With Taylor Swift: ‘The Best Night Of My Life’ This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less