Names

This post is a part of the Absolute Write Blog Chain, Round 2. I am following Peregrinas, which is always an interesting read. In fact, all the blogs in the chain are . I hope you'll spend a lazy afternoon wandering through the chain.

Anyway, from the blog ahead of me I was intrigued with the idea of names. Probably because I have an unusual given name, Wendelynn. Until the past years of the Internet explosion, I had never come across another Wendelynn. Even in the early days of the Net, I was pretty alone. Today if you Google the name, you get 618 entries, many of them are me but there are really lots of Wendelynn's in the universe.

My version of Wendelynn came about because I am a first child and my father is Wendell. The story goes that there was a weather girl that one of my parents especially enjoyed on TV and her name was Lynn. So I am named for an unknown TV weather broadcaster in Lincoln,NE and my dad. That's a funny combination. Oh, by the way, it's pronounced Wen-Duh- Lynn, not Wendy- Lynn and no one in my family ever called me by it. My dad was always called Wendy and I became Wendy Jo, finally an acknowledgement of my mother's contribution to my full name!

One day I came across this great numerology site with thousands of names in their database, but no Wendelynn. I sent them an email and they calculated my name. The opening sentence of the report on my full given name was "This is a name that should never be given to anyone?"

I usually go by Wendy, always feeling that Wendelynn was too intimidating. Just this last year or so, as I turned 50, have I become comfortable with it as a name. Wendy is an interesting one too, most people thinking that J.M.Barrie made it up for Peter Pan. Not so, says another Wendy.

You'd think that having grown up with an unusual name would have led me to naming my own child something unremarkable like Ann, Jane or Cathy. Unfortunately, the unusual name thing must have a magnetic pull on me. My first choice for my daughter's name was Cyan, after the color. My husband lived in fear that I actually was going to insist on that! We actually named our daughter Kira, after an unforgettable heroine in Ayn Rand's We The Living.

She has carried on the naming quirk too, having named one of her furry catkids, Turtle!

How do you feel about your name? Does it suit your personality? Have you ever seriously wanted a different name but still use your given name? Do you know how your own name was chosen?

Next up in the chain is Madderblue. Enjoy!


awchain