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DM: Well, I should mention that you were the winner of the Min Yasui Volunteer Award for your many, many contributions to the community and Boulder and Denver. And I want to ask you one other question. Because when I met you first, three years ago, I was introduced to you as Mariagnes, but now you're known as Aya. So I was wondering if you would tell me about that transition.

AM: Well, as you know, Mariagnes is, as I said earlier, is an Irish Roman Catholic name. I was named after the mother of a Catholic priest who baptized me. And one day, three or four years ago, I was writing my name on something and I thought, "I'm not really Mariagnes, I'm really Aya." Mariagnes is a Roman Catholic name, which I have not been a practicing Roman Catholic for forty-two years, and Aya is my real name, and it's a name that my grandparents and my parents gave me, and it means "love and affection." And I thought, "Well, that seems to me, be me more than anything else." So that's when I told friends that I was gonna use the name Aya, and that my friends can use, keep calling me Mariagnes. But it's really for myself that I'm doing it, so, "Don't feel bad if you don't remember." And it's really because Aya is, was not just that it was given to me by my grandparents and my parents so much as it feels more like me, and it feels right. And when I see the characters, "Aya" and what it means, it feels more like me. So that's why I use Aya. And I keep saying, when people say, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot your name was now... what is it now?" And I say, I say it and says, "That's okay. I mean, you don't have to apologize. It's for myself that I'm doing it."

DM: It's even more complicated than that, though, right? Because the name that you were given is Ayako.

AM: Oh, yeah. Well, "Ayako" means, "ko" is child, so, and on my birth certificate it doesn't say "ko," it says "Aya," A-Y-A. So that's why I use Aya, because it's on my birth certificate, the identification of who I am.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright ©2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.