What challenges did I have when I included a local version of my name in social media?

Hi, I come from Bulgaria, a country in the Balkans.

Looking back on history, apart from how it shaped my short-fuze Balkan DNA, I feel proud of my nation’s adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet. I embraced that and changed my public profile name to almost every online platform to include a Cyrillic version of my nickname. So I became Bogomil Shopov—Бого.

Then, challenges arose. Here is a list of some of them if you want to follow my lead or learn how to be more inclusive.

Pi%s off, b&^%oody Russian.

The situation with the war in Ukraine brought hate to all people using the Cyrillic alphabet. This statement usually comes from people with low education unable to understand that not only people in Russia use this alphabet but also other 125 million people.

Fonts mismatch

Some websites use fonts that do not support Cyrillic encoding, and you see the vast visual difference between the name in English and Bulgarian. No maker expects a string to use two different encodings, and sometimes, we misdesign our systems, expecting specific encoding. The good thing is that it only happens sometimes.

What does “Бого” mean?

I made a mistake when I added the name. I needed to explain how to read it to people. Some websites allow me to add something to my profile description.

Embrace who you are and find your unique way to say it to the world.

Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash