How do I navigate having a different name in different cultural contexts?

Sor Juana understood something vital: names carry power, and the version of your name you use in different spaces isn't dishonesty—it's navigation. She herself moved between being Juana, Sor Juana, and the intellectual she became in the convent's library. Think of your names not as fragmented but as different dialects of your identity. In your family, your name might hold ancestral weight. At work, it might be anglicized or simplified. Online, it might be something entirely different. The question isn't which one is "real"—they're all real. What matters is whether you're choosing consciously. Are you code-switching to survive in a system that doesn't fully see you, or to honor different parts of yourself? There's a difference. The work is noticing when you feel friction: when a name feels like hiding versus when it feels like protecting something precious. Sor Juana wrote under constraints, yes, but she also wrote exactly what she needed to write. Your names can do the same—carry your truth forward in whatever form keeps you whole.