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« Oh no, it didn’t bother me at all, because the kids here hadn’t yet got used to my name. To anyone who asked me "What’s your name?" I used to answer "Yerina." And then they would start asking, "How come you have such a name?" and "Why?" and "Where are you from?" and this and that. But once I got baptized and they started calling me Anthi, they stopped asking me questions. »
« That’s another story! Don’t ask, [that’s] a long story! I used to go to work, as I told you, and to say my name: Illir! My name, Illir, is an ancient Albanian name. There was the king of Illyria! Have you heard of him? And…it is an ancient Albanian name. A lovely name! I would tell them my name. That is, Illir. Nobody could say it! No way! Nobody. "Hey you," I would tell them "that’s not my name. My name is Illir, not Sotiris!" Some guy [called me] Apostolis. "Hey you," I told him "Stop calling me Sotiris or Apostolis." One evening as we were sitting all together, my uncle and my cousins started saying: "How should we name this guy?" "Let’s call him Dimitris!" Here they all knew me with that name: Dimitris, Dimitris, Dimitris. That was the case with all of us! Because only a few of us have Christian names. Eh, you know Greek names. […] And now even my family calls me Dimitris. Now…if you call me Dimitris, I’ll reply. If you call me Illir, I won’t reply. To that extent. »
Name change
