My Name is Vasant 🌸
I Have Legally Changed My Name
Hello everyone,
a few weeks I legally changed my name to Vasant Alex Laplam.
It was a decision years in the making, for reasons I’ll get into more in this post. But practically speaking, this means I would prefer that you call me “Vasant” moving forward.
You may also see me use “Laplam Alex Vasant” or “L. A. Vasant” because, in my father’s culture, name order is the opposite of Western tradition. “Laplam” is my house/family name, “Alex” is my middle name, and “Vasant” is my given name.
This is a big move, I understand, so I thought it would be helpful for me to explain what’s going on. Let’s start with the basics.
Who Am I?
I was born Josiah James Pothen. I’m the son of a college professor and a homemaker. I grew up in Virginia and have lived in New York for the last 10 years. I’ve had a strange, hopscotch career, most recently working as a business journalist for a trade publication called Payments Dive.
Growing up, I would have told you I felt like a white person with brown skin. That’s because my Indian immigrant parents chose to only speak English at home, cook mainly American food and worship in white evangelical churches.
What Did I Do Exactly?
I went through the process to legally change my name from “Josiah James Pothen” to “Vasant Alex Laplam.” It just involved filling out a form and paying a small fee.
Where Does My New Name Come From?
It comes from the tradition of my father’s people: the Saint Thomas Christians who live in Kerala, a state in the south of India.
What Does My New Name Mean?
Names are passed down in that culture and depend on gender and birth order. Sons inherit the house name, which comes from a literal house, the physical structure the family lives in. Sons also get their father’s name as their middle name. And a son’s given name comes from a male relative.
My given comes from my grandfather on my mother’s side. I don’t know his name but my mother says she would always put down “Vasant,” which means springtime in Sanskrit.
Why Now?
After the George Floyd protests of 2020, I started seeing prominent actors change their names.
Thandiwe Newton put the “w” back in her first name. Zoe Saldaña put the tilde back into her last name. Elliot Page announced that he was transgender and changed his name to reflect his gender identity.
Then in 2022, I left a large evangelical church in Manhattan. In 2023 I formally left the evangelical world for a different kind of Christianity. That was also the year I lived with my Indian relatives in New Jersey.
I’ve been realizing all the ways I’ve contorted myself to make white folks comfortable. I’ve started asking questions about why after decades, maybe even centuries, my parents broke with naming traditions.
So I decided to reclaim my name.
How Am I Feeling?
Relieved.
My parents gave me the dorkiest Bible name you can imagine: “Josiah.” Even when I went by “James” it felt kind of vanilla. But Vasant is relatively easy to pronounce, identifies me as a person of Indian origin and has a beautiful meaning.
The seasons are changing. The name Josiah James Pothen has served me well, and it is time to lay it aside.
It’s time for the season of Vasant.
