When parents are naming their children, they usually restrict themselves to a combination limited to 26 letters, but about a dozen students from Armijo have had their parents add punctuation to their names and that takes it to a whole other level.

Tas’jay Julian is one of those students. She and her brother Kai’juan both have an apostrophe in their name to separate the two syllables. “My parents never told me how I got my name or the history,” she said.

Her name is definitely one-of-a-kind. “I never meet anyone inside or outside of school with my first name,” Julian said. “When people first hear my name, they say, ‘How do you pronounce it?’”

“If I was able to create my own first name, it would be Tas’jay because my name is different from others and unique and I like it that way,” she said.

As a freshman, she hasn’t had to tell many Armijo students how to pronounce her name because she has only been a Royal through Distance Learning. COVID has kept her from going to school and having the “high school experience, playing volleyball, and just meeting new people,” she said. “I used to play volleyball but it stopped because of COVID-19.”

She hopes to have more opportunities to experience high school, but after she graduates, her intent is to go to college and study to be a nurse.