Tuesday, November 27, 2007

what's in a name?

would i have been just as sweet?............

after starting a comment over after reading this post, i thought:
sure! i had nothing to write about today... i'll go ahead and continue my story.

the post was about what we would've been named, had we been the other sex. also if anyone regrets their child's name, or if anyone used the same "name pool" for the second (+) children.

so i began by saying had i been a boy, i would've been christopher michael.
growing up i loved that name. now i realize how little fanfare there was in the 70's regarding naming children than present day.
i still love the classic-ness of that name, though & was convinced as a child i would have twins- a boy and a girl. i would name them christopher michael, and kristin michelle. ha!
well, i don't have twins, and i grew up.

i have more to say about naming, though. (me? more to say?? surely you jest!)

according to my sis' legend, i was going to be kelly, until i was born and she convinced my dad to name me michelle. (not sure if that had anything to do w/ michael or not). i'm glad.

and even still, i was intended to be michele (which i do NOT prefer!). i spent my whole year of kindergarten declaring "no! it's one L". for some reason, my mom needed my birth certificate for first grade. we happened to notice, 5 years too late, that my name was indeed michelle. apparently, they mispelled it on the birth certificate. sooooooooo i had to change my own name, and recorrect teachers who had learned the old correct spelling and tell them: oops.

i like michelle soooooo much better. i think it looks better. and until i got married i had double letters in each of my names. [and my last name is pretty odd, and you would expect it to have double letters- but it doesn't. HEY! should we go check someone's birth certificate????]
michele also carries with it a bad connotation in our family.

in college, i was mpotter. that's how i met The Mr. that's why i let it stick. & it got shortened to m by a select few.
in fact, one summer, The Mr.'s best friend was asked what the m stood for. and after a stutter, he declared emily.

so, i'm usually michelle. sometimes mpotter. for my family & some close friends, chelle. the occasional m (usually when i'm being lazy). and i spent 7 years as Mrs. ____

what's in a name -indeed!

3 comments:

Lainey-Paney said...

I was either going to be Bxxxxx Laine, or Brooklyn Laine.

I got the first of the two, and I hate my first name.

So, I usually go by Laine.

My name sounds like a stripper name.

But, that's okay. Clearly, my mom loved it.

And w/ regard to my child's name: I love it. So far have no regrets. And told my girlfriends when we were about 11 years old---that I'd have a little boy some day, and I would name him Gage. And I did.

:)

Jennifer said...

Seriously? A mistake on the birth certicate?! How funny!

Pregnantly Plump said...

My maiden name is porter, so whenever I see your comments, I do a doubletake! I tell people I was named after Meredith Baxter Birney. My dad says Burgess Meredith. In truth, my mom just liked the name.

I still like Little Elvis' real name. We call him a nickname, but if he decides to go by the whole name or a different nickname when he's older, I'm cool with that.