"What's in a name?" -Shakespeare

One of the biggest regrets of my life is my name.

Not in the sense that I hate my name or the way it sounds, but the fact that I have SO MANY. I was born Maria Angela Avendano. Plain enough. But the family decided to change it up on me by nicknaming me "Angeline". (Nicknames are very common in the Philippines, which is where I was born) So for the first years of my life no one even mentioned my given name, I was Angeline. Then my mom and I moved to the United States right before my 6th birthday. I was still Angeline---to family, at least---but when they enrolled me in a public school for first grade, my name on the roll was Maria. I honestly don't know why I didn't let the teacher know that I didn't go by Maria. I'm not even sure if I knew what was going on because Tagalog was still my primary language. But either way, I became known as Maria to my fellow first graders and that, my dear friends, was my second experience of an occurring identity crisis.
My third came just months later when my parents built a house in another city and they transferred me to a private school towards the end of my first grade year. I was mildly devastated, at least as devastated as a six year old could be, but it ended up being pretty neat. Except for one minor detail....they called me Angela. Now I don't know how this happened or what conversation transpired between my teacher and I that caused her to call me by my middle name. Maybe I was embracing the changes that were occurring in my life and I decided another major change wouldn't hurt. (I highly doubt this theory) Or maybe my teacher just had something against the name Maria and she thought Angela sounded better. I don't know. But it was a life changing day because from that day on and for the next 7 and a half years after it, I would be known as Angela Avendano. Mind you my family still called me Angeline, but my teachers and friends from school now referred to me as Angela. Thus, comes my fourth experience with an identity crisis.
I transferred to a public school in 9th grade and throughout the four years of high school I was highly involved in the AFJROTC. (Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps) I was still Angela for the first few months of my freshman year, but the more I got involved in this new program, the more friends I made. And as most friends do, mine gave me a nickname. My corps commander that year started calling me "Angie" and just like that---the name stuck. After awhile even the teachers were calling me Angie, but as much as I wish it was, it's still not the end to my dilemma of names.
And this is where I will introduce my husband, Brendon. I met Brendon through his girlfriend, who happened to be a close friend of mine at the time. She introduced me as Angela, but after glancing at the school ID hanging around my neck, he saw that my given name was actually Maria and he insisted that he was going to call me by my "real" name. This might not have been a big deal if he was the only one calling me by a different name, but a few years later we started dating and he introduced me to his family. The name that he introduced me as? Maria, of course. So now I was known by Maria by not only him, but his family and everyone else he introduced me to as well.
So my husband, his family, and our church members know me as Maria. My post high school friends refer to me as Angela. My family has always called me Angeline and my most current friends and high school classmates call me Angie. Sometimes....most times...it gets confusing. What do I introduce myself as when I'm meeting new people? Well it just depends...in the most famous words of Shakespeare, "What's in a name?"