Her parents named her … Swastika. She wants you to understand why

The useful part

When she was growing up, Swastika Sah, 26, didn't realize there was anything potentially "controversial" about her name. "Growing up in Nepal, swastika was seen pretty much everywhere — on every doorstep, when someone gets married or you buy a new car or whatever it may be," Sah tells TODAY.com. Then anti-Semitic German groups began adopting it in the early 20th century.

How it works

• Today, the overwhelming majority of Americans connect the swastika with the rise of Nazi power — and it is still used by white supremacist organizations today.
• In their small, isolated, religious Nepali village of Jankapur, Sah's parents only knew of the swastika's positive, Hindu meaning, which is why they gave the name to their daughter.
• It was only after her family moved to Texas in 2008 that Sah started to notice that people had a reaction to her name.
• "Any substitute teacher in elementary school would stop when my name would come up.
• It wasn't until Sah was 13 that she fully realized the historical link between her name and World War II.

What to take from it

That's because where she was born in Nepal, there wasn't. "I always associated it with good fortune and well-being and Ram and Sita and religious history." Sah didn't receive negative feedback for her name at school.

Details worth keeping

"My parents and a lot of people in South Asia always associated swastika with good fortune and well-being." According to Smithsonian Magazine, the swastika symbol has been used by multiple cultures — Native American, Greek, Buddhist, Hindu — for thousands of years. I thought they were just having a hard time pronouncing it," she says. "I was shocked," she says of her moment of realization.