Blasian Backpacker?: How choosing my blog name allowed me to reckon with my identity.
Choosing a blog name was HARD. This name is what people will judge you by, what represents you. This name is essentially your brand. So, no pressure.
I knew that I didn’t want to use my name in my ‘brand name’, but when you’re trying to create a blog, there is almost no way you can go about it without sounding a little corny.
I started by thinking up things about me and about how I like to travel. I like natural beauty, I try to keep things cheap but comfortable, I don’t mind being on my own, and I love finding a nice spot to watch the sunset wherever I am… And then I did what everyone does and I asked ChatGPT to come up with a name for me. There were some pretty good suggestions:
Sunset Seeker
Nature Nomad
Wild & frugal
Cheap Thrills Traveler
But nothing really resonated with me. I felt those names could have been associated with anyone’s travel blog - I guess that’s what happens when you use AI, it doesn’t feel as personal.
So, I went back to thinking about me, and about how I could make my blog more personal. And that’s when I came up with The Blasian Backpacker.
I knew it was different and had the potential to hit a gap in the travel blog market. I also knew that lack of ethnic and cultural diversity was something I had noticed both around reading travel blogs and also whilst travelling myself. But I just didn’t feel comfortable defining myself and my brand by my ethnicity. So I tabled the name and continued brainstorming.
A few days later, and still no closer to a blog name decision, I began to question why I felt so uncomfortable using Blasian Backpacker. Having grown up in a majority-white area, and attended a majority-white school, I was always acutely aware that I was different. At the same time, because all that I ever saw and all that I ever did was associated with whiteness, I would sometimes forget that I ‘wasn’t white’ too. No matter, at some point soon enough, my otherness (or my non-whiteness) would be made humiliatingly apparent to me by friends or family calling me an Oreo or making fun of my attempt at a back-combed ponytail. They’d do it ‘in jest’, but these were the people I was closest to. And so I’d get further lost in the muddle of who I am, what I am meant to be, and where I belong.
Identity was/is confusing.
This is not an unfamiliar story. Many people of colour and many children of immigrants will have similar stories. For those from a mixed-race background, there can be the added feeling of complete aloneness because it feels like there is no one else like you and nowhere you can ‘go back to’. You will always be different to everyone else around you.
So I guess, the reason I feel uncomfortable calling myself Blasian is that I’ve spent so many years trying to not call myself that. So many years of being ashamed and confused by my otherness and therefore spent so many years trying to blend in.
I like to think that by now referring to myself as Blasian I am taking ownership of who I am and of my identity. A lot of who I am today comes from my experiences of my family’s cultures and growing up as a woman of colour. But I can’t lie, it’s still something that makes me feel uncomfortable. I personally don’t believe that your culture or your ethnicity should be a defining characteristic of yourself, but it also shouldn’t be something that is hidden or unacknowledged. For me, choosing this blog name is about finding that balance for myself.