The Burden of Multiple Naming

Sor Juana existed under multiple names and identities: Juana Ramírez (birth name), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (religious name), La Décima Musa (the tenth muse), and various titles reflecting her status. Each name carried different expectations, limitations, and possibilities. This concept examines how people across cultures experience fragmentation when required to present different selves in different spaces—a child named one thing at home, another at school; an immigrant carrying names that sound different in new tongues; a woman given her father's name, then her husband's. The burden isn't merely linguistic; it's psychological and political. Multiple naming can represent richness and hybridity, yet it also reflects power dynamics and assimilation pressures. Sor Juana's example shows how claiming one's full identity across all contexts—refusing compartmentalization—becomes an act of justice and wholeness, though society may punish such refusal.