NoNieqa Ramos: Hi, my name is NoNieqa Ramos, and my name is spelled capital N-O-capital N-I-E-Q-A, which can be baffling in its spelling and pronunciation.

One thing that I like to talk about is why it is that on my birth certificate, my name is capitalized in this way. When I asked my father, his answer was twofold. The first, "I am okay," he said, "with you having to struggle to correct people in pronouncing this name, because I want you to be assertive." My name was his preparation for how he thought I needed to approach life. And so that's the first part.

And the second part, with the capital Ns, is about confidence. He wanted me to be a confident person. He wanted me to be a person who learned to speak up for myself and to stand up for what I believed in, and so he encapsuled all that in my name.

So NoNieqa, with those all emphasis on those letters, was quite intentional on his part, and I think it's amazing that he was thinking this way when I was a tiny, tiny person. Yes, I've had to struggle. I don't mind if people ask me how to say it. I have multiple pronunciations of my name because of the fact that my family says it three different ways, but NoNieqa is how my father perceived my name was supposed to be said to other people when I introduced myself.