My mother named me. When she was pregnant with me, she read an article about twin princesses born in Malaysia who were named Soraya and Surina, named after stars in the sky. She liked the name Surina, and chose it for me.

I had other names too. When we moved to Connecticut, my mother, a fan of the nickname, asked me, “Do you want to be called  Betsy or Cindy?” I’m not sure why she only offered me those two choices, or why I didn’t ask for additional choices. Maybe because I liked the names Betsy and Cindy. At first I had a difficult time choosing between the two until I remembered how much I liked watching The Brady Bunch, one of my favorite shows, so I chose Cindy, who was the youngest of six siblings in the Brady family. For years my mother would affectionately call me Cindy or Cindy Lou.

When I was growing up, I never knew anyone named Surina, only Serena the mischievous cousin of  Samantha on the television show Bewitched. These days, the name Surina is increasing in popularity. Made even more popular by the character Serena on Gossip Girl. And how could I forget Serena Williams the tennis star? Surina even shows up on the website Babynamer.com. According to which, my name is used in Hindi and the source of it is Sura, a Sanskrit name meaning “Goddess.” Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes shortened my name to Suri for their daughter. It’s possible that my name may become a favorite of the Scientologists next.

Serena the witch was so popular when I was younger that people were forever misspelling my name, Serena, or sometimes Sarina. I still have to spell it. “It’s Surina, spelled S-u-r-i-n-a,” I say when people ask me my name. And then I spell my last name, “Khan, spelled K-h-a-n,” which, even when I spell it, gets spelled incorrectly as Kahn. So now I say, “It’s Khan, spelled K-h- pause for emphasis a-n. I have seen my name spelled in a variety of ways: Sarina Kahn, Serena Cahn, Sorina Caan. Maybe one day my name will be so popular that the spelling will be too.

Sometimes for fun, Jenny and I think about what our names and occupations would be if we had to go into the Witness Protection Program. Jenny chose Beck (from Rebecca) Laarsen, consistent with her Swedish heritage. Beck would be a valet at a boutique hotel in Montreal. I would be the concierge at the same hotel and my name would be Betsy Singh, consistent with my South Asian heritage, but mixing up the Indian/Pakistani and the Muslim/Sikh just to make a fun political statement. I like that my initials would be BS. And then Beck would make an honorable woman out of me, and I would change my name to Betsy Singh Laarsen.