When You Hear Her First Name, You'll Understand How the Islamic State and the Media Are Hurting Her

What's in a name?

An awful lot, if you share the name with a brutal jihadist organization.

Isis Martinez, a Miami, Florida woman, started an online petition targeting "Every Media Outlet in the United States" with a simple message: Stop saying "ISIS" (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) to refer to the Islamic State.

As Fusion reported:

Martinez, who was named after her mother (who was named after the Egyptian goddess), told Fusion she has grown frustrated by all the negative reactions her name has elicited.

...

Martinez said her breaking point came during a recent visit to a hospital emergency room when a nurse made a comment after hearing her name.

"She asked if I have a middle name, and I told her it's Teresa," Martinez recounted. "She then suggested I go by that. I felt terrible. That lit a fire under me and motivated me to do something."

As of Saturday morning, Martinez' petition, which asks that media outlets use "ISIL" (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) instead of "ISIS," had received almost 900 of the targeted 1,000 signatures.

Martinez also expressed her frustrations in a YouTube video last month.

Why won't she just use her middle name?

"People don't know me as Teresa, they know me as Isis,” she told Fusion. “If I do that, then the terrorists win."

TheBlaze has officially been using the term "Islamic State" to refer to the jihadist group since mid-August.

This story has been updated.

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