Tara Lynn Masih: Hello. My name is Tara Lynn Masih. It's a simple enough pronunciation, but people have trouble reading my last name, as I think the H at the end throws everyone off. There's both history and culture behind my name. First, I'm a bicultural author. My mother is mostly Eastern European and my father was East Indian. So when they named their children, they combined names from both cultures. Tara is both Indian and Irish. The Irish by the way, pronounce it as Tara. It means star in Hindi, and in Ireland it refers to the Hill of Tara, where royalty was buried.

So the Irish affiliate it with land and rocky hills, hence the name Tara for the plantation in Gone With The Wind. My last name was changed about three generations back. It was originally Singh, which means lion, as we were from a warrior cast in northern India. When my great grandfather converted to Christianity, the missionaries changed the name to Masih or Massee as it's pronounced in India, for Messiah. This was a way to erase Hindu culture and to make clear to Indians that the person carrying the name Masih was a Christian.

My father did think of converting back to Singh at one point but didn't want to upset my grandfather, who is a well-known leprosy doctor and minister, so he never did. I love the history behind my name.