Learning what it means to be American from someone new

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.

One of the first questions I ask someone I’m just getting to know is the meaning of his or her name. We are all named a name for a reason.

“She was my mom’s favorite singer the year I was born,” a student shared with me once. While movie actors or storybook characters are reasons that pop up once in a while, mostly, people I meet seemed to be given names to memorialize…