Members of the Australian-Greek community rally in Brisbane in support of their homeland. Credit:Michelle Smith In early December in Melbourne, 26-year-old Arna Dionysopoulos was racially abused aboard a train as she was returning home from work after a man noticed her name on an identification tag. He told her to "get out of Australia" and said he would love to put a gun to her head and pull the trigger, and to do the same to her father, who was from Greece. The man also said he had four knives, threatened to use them, and followed her when she left the train. Like Arna, I am a second-generation migrant, the child of parents who came to Australia from another country. And, like Arna, I took my father's long, unpronounceable surname. Ever since, I have carried those 13 letters around my neck like a millstone. When I was a kid at primary school in the 1980s, I went by the "slave" name Peter Pappas. Mercifully, my parents figured it was easier to pronounce for teachers and children alike. And fair enough, really – fitting in when you're the only kid with dark hair and brown eyes was hard enough. I was surrounded by names such as White, Read, Johnston, Douglas, Carroll, all with light-coloured hair and blue eyes. There was even a Grubb. He was a bully. When the kids heard that Pappas wasn't my real name, they went on a quest of discovery. They knew where I lived, but none of them was willing to search a thick phone book to find the address, which had my real surname alongside. Finally, in high school, someone found it. I was teased relentlessly and got beaten up by some of the bigger bullies. Grubb had a field day. Life became hell. Things only got worse when they found my first name was actually Panagiotis. "Peter" is technically a translation, so I retain Panagiotis on official documents. But Pappas was just a bastardised version of my real surname. I dropped it right there and haven't used it since.

Children who inherit non-Anglo surnames should not have to feel troubled by it. Credit:Jamie Grill My son is now four months old. He has his daddy's tiresome surname. To make matters worse, we gave him a long first name. The midwives and nurses are already pronouncing it wrong. Welcome to the world, son. You'll lose years of your life correcting people and spelling it slowly over the phone. You'll laugh when you see some of the interpretations and then be annoyed when you have to spend more time fixing them. But I'd hate to think that someone one day targets my son on a train when they see his name tag. Will he be abused for it? And if I one day have a daughter, will I need to worry about her being attacked for it? People who racially abuse their fellow commuters on public transport are looking for an "in" – a visual clue that identifies their victim as an "other". Skin colour is usually top of their list. It's perhaps no surprise that name tags are a close second.

It's strange that Arna's attack happened in Melbourne, where a large percentage of the population is of Greek heritage. Statistically, Melbourne is the third largest Greek city in the world after Athens and Thessaloniki. As part of the 1923 population exchange with Turkey, my grandfather walked thousands of kilometres west to Greece. The whole way, he was kicked and spat upon by Turkish guards, still bathing in their victory in the Greco-Turkish War in western Anatolia. He arrived in Thessaloniki exhausted, hungry, and desperate, in the same way so many mainly Syrian refugees are today arriving on the Greek islands. They too have strange, unpronounceable names. I hate my long ethnic surname. But it's the same name my refugee grandfather had scribbled across his papers that were scrutinised by Turkish guards. My baby son has the same 13 letters that he will one day take to places unknown. The first time I visited Greece and went through airport customs, it was as if the immigration officer was an angel calling my name. She said it so casually and perfectly, like it was nothing. The lights of heaven came on. In 2012, national league soccer player Michael Theoklitos changed his name to Michael Theo. I respect Michael as both an ambassador for Greek-Australians and a sportsman (I'm an amateur goalkeeper myself), but I thought Anglicising his surname was a step backwards.

And yet, I still hate my long ethnic surname. But I love it too. And this isn't Australia in the 1980s any more. It's 2016 in a few weeks. A whole generation has grown up. So my self-hatred has to stop, if not for my sake then for the sake of my own children who have inherited the same troublesome, annoying, beautiful 13 letters. Won't you help me? Peter Papathanasiou is a freelance writer.