what's in a name?

[mountain_laurel]

a couple of years ago, a thread arose on a now-defunct website about the mental associations we have with names. sometimes it's just something personal -- the name "Kevin" will always remind me of a particular Kevin, for instance. sometimes it's something cultural, i.e., in the US at least, names like Edna and Harold carry geeky and/or old-fashioned connotations. Lola sounds sexy to us, for whatever reason. Jake sounds tough and cool. you get the idea.

i wonder if this is why so many of us -- especially of the nerdy persuasion -- start going by other names as teenagers. it's a way not only to rebel against parents, but to choose a name whose connotations appeal to us, as though by changing our names we can change ourselves. and perhaps we can, who knows?

these days, i like my name: Meredith Laurel Tanner. it sounds very dignified and adult. it looks great on a resume. but it was a bit cumbersome for a kid, so my parents called me Muffy. (and before you decide this would be a hilarious thing to tease me with, i have very painful and unpleasant associations with that name, and it would not be funny.) naturally, i hated this with a passion. i can guess why my mother chose that, though -- it was a preppy sort of name, and that was what she wanted for me.

when i was in junior high school, i started hanging out with three other girls who were really into the Beatles, and we all went by the name of a Beatle. i picked Ringo, because i thought it sounded cool, and i went by that for a couple of years. my parents hated it, which only made it better. pretty soon, though, i started thinking it was lame, and i wanted something that sounded more feminine and mysterious. so i insisted that everyone call me Gypsy.

oh man, did that one ever stick. there are people who still call me that, 20 years later. and it carried definite connotations. it was my username when i first got on the net, and i used to get email from guys speculating on what i looked like. they'd always guess i was petite, olive-skinned, with long black hair and dark eyes. Gypsy was very popular -- Ringo had made a few friends, but everybody knew Gypsy. i used it as my performing name too, and that also grabbed people's attention.

somewhere in there, though, it started to feel really silly and pretentious to me. it was the nickname a dorky teenager would choose for herself, not the sort of thing i wanted to be called as an adult. and so i changed my username online to "merde", and started going by Meredith in meatspace. over time, some people have started actually calling me "merde", and that's ok with me, but it's not something i ever intended to be a real nickname. it was just a funny username. and, as i say, i like my name these days.

in that thread on the website about names, several people said the name Meredith sounded snotty to them, and they'd be less inclined to like someone with that name. ever since, i've been wondering if that could be part of why i've had so much trouble making new friends since i left the DC area (which was shortly after i stopped going by Gypsy). i personally don't think it sounds "snotty". i think it sounds like a serious name, an adult name. but i would have to agree that it's not a fun name. nor is it casual, which is something our society seems to value very highly. anyone who's got serious-sounding name -- or one with more than one syllable -- knows how compulsively people assign nicknames, as though the burden of speaking a multisyllabic name is simply too onerous to be borne.

so i wonder. could it be that insisting on going by my full name makes me seem less approachable somehow? either because it sounds "snotty", or because not having a nickname seems unfriendly somehow, or perhaps a combination of the two? what would happen if i tried going by a different name? there are shortened versions of Meredith -- Merry is the most common, and i hated it for years and years but find it doesn't seem so awful anymore. maybe the next time i go somewhere i'm not already known -- a new job, or a convention away from home, or something -- i'll try going by that and see if people react to me differently. it'd be an interesting experiment.

so what do you think of my name? what do you think of your own? do you like it? hate it? wish people would call you something else? do you go by a name that's not even related to your real name? how did that start, and are you still comfortable with it?

Comments

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

I believe that my personality was partly formed through having an unusual name. If you can spell it, you can't pronounce it, and vice versa; in elementary and junior high school it was an albatross. I went to summer camp one year, where we all received nicknames, and became "C.J." (for "Cracker Jack"), which I tried but failed to sustain through normal life. I didn't meet another "Ilana" until high school.

I think I grew into "Ilana" in college, when I joined Markland, where everyone had made-up, fantasy-sounding aliases. I didn't even have to bother with one. Now I like my name very much. It became me, or maybe the other way around.

Not everyone feels that way about his or her unusual name. My husband hates his and I'm actually surprised he hasn't changed it.

"Meredith" is to me neither stuffy nor bouncy. Maybe a little elegant. I don't think you fit my conception of Meredith, but neither are you Merry (and you are definitely NOT Muffy). "Mer" would do -- I know it sounds like "mare", but I have a friend named Merri (from Meredith? I don't know) who also goes by "Mer", and I think it would fit you

[merde.livejournal.com]

My husband hates his and I'm actually surprised he hasn't changed it.

my ex-husband did change his name. he was born Brett, and hated it so much that when he was 14 he talked his mother into letting him have it legally changed to Pierce.

i've always really liked the name Brett, but i have to admit, he definitely wasn't a Brett.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Hmm. So you think that Britt should change his name to....Percy?
Aie!

[fredfred.livejournal.com]

Brett:Pierce::Britt:Piirce

Merry.

[wouldprefernot2.livejournal.com]

It's been years since I've even read Tolkien, but my instant thought was "Hobbit name!"

Sorry.

I have an Anglo-Saxon first name and a German last name; and I don't think they go well together. It doesn't help that my first name is also that of a prominent muppet-like company mascot. I once toyed with the idea of going by my middle name, but then I worked for a tyrant who had it for his first name.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

I was named Catherine but am almost never called this except by francophones, and now by Amazon because it's the legal name on my Visa card. My mom called me Cathy, which I never liked much, but since she was my more sociable parent I got called that a lot, at school and in the neighbourhood. My dad called me Kate, it having been his mom's name. I don't think preferring Kate is a particularly Freudian gesture; I just like it better. The Kids in the Hall had a recurring sketch about two loserish secretaries, both called Cathy, which kind of summed up how the name felt to me.

Other names: one of my old BBS names was Grenade, so when I first met Ben that's how he thought of me. After awhile that got a bit silly. My Tibetan name is Karma Shedrub Wangmo. I've never used it socially but my nethack character has been called wangmo for a long time. I use Zadcat for login a few places. The name expands to Shahrazad Katz if I have to fill out any stupid forms. Once had an email from someone called Katz who was researching her family history. But I don't think of myself and I don't think anyone thinks of me as Shahrazad Katz - it's just a convenient screen identity for web privacy when sites demand a login.

I know what you mean about names having baggage. Anglos always find "Catherine" kind of a severe name and will do anything to soften it. Even "Kate" is too much for some and I've once or twice had to tell people (through gritted teeth) that I am not called Katie. In French "Catherine" is quite different and rather sexy, cf. La vie sexuelle de Catherine M., but in anglo Montreal, where the main shopping street is sometimes called "Saint Kit's", it doesn't buy me much.

[merde.livejournal.com]

i couldn't see you as anything but a Kate. you are most definitely not a Cathy. of course, whether you grew into being Kate or whether it just suited you from the beginning, who can say? but it's a good match for you, IMHO. whereas, for instance, catbear doesn't like his first name, and indeed, it doesn't suit him well either. i'm not sure what name i'd hang on him, but that's definitely not it.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

By the way, I think Meredith is a fine name, even specifically in that it has no obvious nickname attached. It's interesting in that it was originally a Welsh surname, Maredudd, meaning "sea lord". I wonder when and why it was first used as a women's given name.

go to www.meredith.com for a good time

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, I hated my name. My father said that he received my name in the middle of the night as an inspiration from the Lord. I think it was more the inspiration of a few too many beers. Kimberly Anne was a popular name for my generation, and I always attended school with at least two other's of the same name.

I fantasized about changing my name. I wanted something more exotic, more royal, or more romantic. But that was silly, because I was the most tomboyish girl in my class. A name like that would never have fit.

People always shortened my name to Kim, and as long as they didn't call me Kimmy (a privilege reserved for only my Dad and my husband to this day) then they survived. When I started working in the high-tech business world, I decided that I wanted people to call me by my full name, Kimberly. Getting people to not call me just plain Kim was very difficult. One of my bosses used to always trip on my name, and call me Kim.....berly. I told him that as long as he didn't call me Burly Kim, then I would let him live.

From where I stand in life now, I feel that the name Kimberly Anne really does fit me. Maybe it was an inspiration of the Lord, as my Dad always said. I still prefer my full name, and I've tried for years to claim kimberly.com for my domain name, but it always seems to be owned by some stripper. I don't think Kimberly sounds like the name of a stripper, do you? To me it is a classy name, with a formal edge to it. I like the idea of making people work a little harder when they call my name, and insisting that they don't shorten it.

As for the name Meredith, I like that name. I don't find it stuffy or snotty at all, however it is a classy formal sort of name... sort of like Kimberly.

Re: go to www.meredith.com for a good time

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

And then, there's my maiden name, which is Walint. Walint is a Hungarian name, and it was apparently originally Balint, not Walint. I did a little research on this after my Grandfather died, as my Grandmother said that the name was changed when his parents came to the U.S., but she couldn't remember what it was. Nobody is sure if Balint was even their surname, as it is a common first name in Hungary, and it means "friend". At least, this is what I've been told. I don't speak Hungarian.

Growing up with a name like Walint wasn't much fun. Teachers, who should be able to sound out phonetic names with ease, were always calling me Kimberly Walnut, which would cause guffaws of laughter from my classmates. Or, they would say "Wallet". I started to explain to people that my name was Wal-lint, like lint on the wall, not the nut on the tree, nor the money in your pocket. That would usually work.

Despite the difficulty caused by my maiden name, I'm quite proud to be one of the few Walint's in the United States. There really are no others, except my own relatives who live in Washington state. We did find another family with a slightly different spelling, if I remember right, it was Wallent, but I have no idea the story behind their name. It could have been a shortened version of Wallenski, which is Polish.

Hence, upon marrying ronebofh, I kept my maiden name, as well as taking his. I now have one of those horribly long names that drives everyone crazy: Kimberly Anne Walint Echeverri.

And yes, please don't put a hyphen between the two last names.

Oh! you're *that* Kim!

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't it be Walint y Echeverri, or some such?
Those long strings of Spanish names are so much fun.

Re: Oh! you're *that* Kim!

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

Sí, soy yo. Señora Kimberly Anne Walint de Echeverri. :)

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I knew a girl in elementary school named Meredith. She was on my soccer team (her father called her Maize, I don't know why) and could really, really sing--she always got the female lead parts in all the school plays. She was nice, but I didn't get along with some of her friends (okay, to be frank, I was the class nerd), so we were never close.

So my personal association with the name Meredith is of someone talented and capable, if that helps.

I never had a nickname that just anyone was allowed to call me until I moved to Seattle. There are a very few people on this planet who are allowed to call me Gen, and anybody reading this already knows if they're one of them. That dates from a particular period in my life and I don't like it coming from anyone else.

People have odd reactions to the name Genevieve. I've explained the origin any number of times (Welsh by way of France, and yes, Jennifer is a derivative of the same original name), but the only traumatic incident I can associate with it is the time a priest sang that song from Camelot at me when I was maybe seven.

People tell me it's pretty. I guess. It's just my name, you know, I've heard it too often to say whether it's pretty or not. Erik still doesn't know how to spell it. We make jokes--I'm named for the patron saint of Paris (actually no, the name comes from my father's family and they're Protestant, and also Welsh), he's named for a guy in Iceland best known for losing his temper and colonizing Greenland.

I've never really subscribed to the notion that our names shape our identities, but it is true that I've grown up into someone far too romantic for my own good.

These days, people are allowed to call me G if they just can't manage all four syllables.

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

"Genevieve" has lots of 'e's. Lots. And still, each is a different phoneme, assuming the speaker is lazy enough to make the second one a schwa.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute... four syllables?

I couldn't call you (or anyone) "G" with a straight face. "Sup, G?" You know.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Depends on how you pronounce it--one can say it in English with only three. In French, though, it's definitely four.

Almost everyone who tries to say it in French pronounces it differently from the way I learned. Either it's a regional/accent distinction, or they're wrong. ^_^

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

In Spanish, it's Genoveva. Two of my maternal greataunts (one by marriage) were called Genoveva.

[merde.livejournal.com]

how's the G pronounced in that?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

In Spanish, g followed by e or i is soft and sounds like j, which is like the German 'ch'. To make it hard, you add a (silent) u; e.g., Guevara, Guillermo. If the u needs to be pronounced, you add a dieresis; e.g., Argüello.

A c followed by e or i is soft and sounds like s, but to make it hard, you instead use que and qui, and cui and cue if the u is voiced. A bit annoying if you ask me.

Genoveva

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

"In Spanish, g followed by e or i is soft and sounds like j"

In other words, the G is pronounced like an H, sorta.

He-no-ve-va.

It's a very pretty name, in any language.

[damienw]

ge-ne-vie-ev, meet dah-mie-en. hi.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

*clapclapclapclapclap*

*bounce*

Dah-mie-en gets a gold star.

[merde.livejournal.com]

shouldn't that be "'sup, G-dawg"?

[swisscheesed.livejournal.com]

I guess I was one of those people who just looked like a Jasmin. Not JasminE either, but without the "e", something my father insisted so I would stand out from the Jasmines of the world. I'm glad because I think JasminE sounds rather trollopy and overly precious, while lopping of the "e" makes the name more sturdy and intelligent somehow, which is how I'd like to think of myself.

I'm not too fond of the name Meredith and you don't really seem like a Meredith. You do seem like a merde, although I'm not sure what that says :) Meredith makes me think of a wan, languishing nymph in an ivory tower.

On longer names

[sargent.livejournal.com]

My parents named me Stephen and my brother Andrew; in neither case did they shorten it. I did the same, at first because it was clearly what my folks wanted, later because it was what I wanted. On a couple of occasions I've introduced myself as "Stephen" and been told, "Well, don't *you* sound stuffy." Okay, maybe, or maybe it's that I like being called by my name, not some shortened version that is most emphatically not my name.

So. For people who shorten my name in what seems to me to be an act of barely repressed hostility, I tend to shorten theirs to the most obnoxious thing I can think of. For a while I had an acquaintance whom I always called "Aie" for that very reason.

[spriggan.livejournal.com]

that's neat about the beatles thing. in middle school, my friends and i were really into the ninja turtles (the comics, not the cartoon) and started calling ourselves by those names; i was donatello. eventually the other kids at school got word of it and used those names to make fun of us, so we stopped using them irl, but on BBSs i was first donatello and then just don. and people would ask why my handle was don, as usually people don't take a handle that is another normal first name. but anyway, the turtles names were very important to us, as it was a way to escape from our lame high school identities as nerds and freaks. but eventually i outgrew the need for it.

but anyway. for a while i didn't have a nickname in my current circle of people, until i started calling myself k-rad on an email list and during LAN games and stuff, and now that has stuck. i don't identify with it at all, i just think it's a funny name to have.

[stoat.livejournal.com]

i think people say that about the name Meredith because it's an older name with some 'heft' - Margaret, Frances, and Elizabeth have a similar feel to them. someone who has the personality to carry a name like Meredith and not turn it into a nickname, therefore, must be more old-fashioned, and take themselves more seriously. unlike Margaret or Elizabeth, however, it's not easily turned into a nickname that sounds natural. women's names heavily tend to end in the 'ee' sound (and to a lesser extent with the 'uh'/'ah' sound), and i wonder if the terribly strong western association with 'ee'-ending names and femininity plays a role in people's tendencies to make 'ee'-nicknames out of women's names that *don't* already end in a diminutive vowel sound. perhaps an insistence on keeping such a name also sends signals about a more stubborn personality?

i have always liked my name (Melissa) and only very rarely have people tried to use Missy (which i hate) as a nickname for me. however, even before i hung out online, i also tended to pick up nicknames. in my case, i don't think Melissa particularly fits my personality. as mentioned above, it has too many syllables, and people have always been willing to come up with something else, and i have always been willing to answer to nicknames.

eventually, sentiments will change... i predict around the time that all the kayley dalton madison taylor mackenzie morgans grow up and meredith suddenly isn't all that big a deal by comparison.

[peglegpete.livejournal.com]

so what do you think of my name? what do you think of your own? do you like it? hate it? wish people would call you something else? do you go by a name that's not even related to your real name? how did that start, and are you still comfortable with it?

I like your name -- to me it doesn't sound stuffy or uptight or anything like that at all. Of course, given how I met you, I think of you as 'merde'. I also roll the 'r' and leer slightly when I say it, but, well, that's because I'm a dork.

I like my name. In it's full form, I think it sounds a bit pretentious, but when I think of myself, I don't think 'John Edward Mayall III (or IV)', but rather 'Johnny'. My folks called me 'Johnny' to avoid confusion, as my dad went by 'John' (and his dad before him went by 'Jack'). When I went off to college, my dad insisted I go by 'John' now that I was an adult, because 'Johnny' was a kid name. He even went so far as to ignore my protests and preemptively introduce me as 'John' when we toured the campus. I thought it was a stupid idea, so I kept reintroducing myself correctly. I didn't give a damn whether or not 'Johnny' sounded childish (although I didn't think it did) -- it was who I felt I was. I generally don't like being called 'John' or 'Jonathon', but that's mainly because, well, my name is 'Johnny'. And I'm anal. But you knew that already.

Some people know me as 'Pete', and that amuses me, particularly since the few times I'm called that, wholesome debauchery usually follows. Whee!

[kwakhed.livejournal.com]

the name "meredith", for me, is linked with this rather incredible looking redhead in high school who i wouldn't get more than a very occasional "hi" from. i was the geek, the nerd, the braniac, so anyone who could achieve their popularity based on their looks was not allowed more than the passing "hello" to my type. we all know what high school social structures maintain as law, right? she's the first meredith to come to mind with the mention of the name, but by no means do i prejudge.

this is probably due to my own name. how can you ascribe anything to a name when you've been given one like "thad". not "thaddeus" -- as i've been saying lately, my parents took the "deus" out of it. combine it with my last name, and i'm pretty sure i'm the only one on the planet with this combination (ask kratkrat about the trouble he had with it when he first saw it back in 2nd grade).

my big problem with my monosyllabic moniker is not any value or lack of value that people ascribe to it, but that it's phonetically weak. try introducing yourself over the phone with it 20 times in a day and see how many people get it right on the first try. "pat?" "matt?" "scott?" "no, thad, like thaddeus..." phonetic weakness plus unfamiliarity leads to people jumping in and making you what they think your name is. every so often, i like the slipperiness it affords, but more often, it becomes an exercise in assertiveness.

i've never tried to go by a nickname, though. so that's one societal experiment i can't give data on. my full name, though, sounds vaguely papal. yeah, officer, kiss my ring. bless you. say 20 hail marys and let me on my way.

i always thought Thad was a cool name.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, Thad! It's Keri Woodring here. 'Course I go by Kerensa now. Just hearing someone other than family call me Keri puts me back in high school - not a place I'd want to send my worst enemy!! I always thought your name was very cool and that it fit your personality - a little odd, but very cool!
Have to agree with you about the name Meredith. I've never met another one after high school, but since then have assumed that all Merediths had red-hair, freckles and a gorgeous smile.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know I think that is a great name!

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

All the Merediths I know are smart, so it seems like a fine strong name to me.

I dealt with my disinclination toward my first given name -- John -- before I was particularly conscious of the choice. I didn't respond to the name, so my parents fell back on Sam, which is the contraction of my second name, Samuel. Humans who call me Samuel rarely impress me by doing so. In fact, I'd switched to "Sam John Bushell" so firmly that a bunch of institutions seem to think that's my official name. At my high school, my name appears on the Scholarships board as "J.S.Bushell" and on the Dux of Sciences board as "S.J.Bushell", an amusing highlighting of the transition from when I arrived and nobody knew me to when I left and everyone did.

On computers, going as "jsam" (always in all lower case) has been useful from a vaguely-unique-identifier standpoint (and even when it isn't, that's okay: the other jsams I've communicated with on the net seem friendly).

I'm very comfortable with Sam, and with jsam.

[damienw]

I like to call you "John Samuel Martinez y Bushell". Or sometimes, "No, the other Sam".

So long as I don't call you late to dinner.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

More later -- I am sooo far behind on writing comments to your posts -- but I did want to throw this into the mix: I still think that you should've gone with my suggestion when we first found out your parents called you Muffy. I suggested you go by "Merry Death". Probably wouldn't work for you now, but it would've been great then.

Oh yeah, that reminds me, I still have your "am I intimidating?" post in an open window to comment on ... ;-)

[missv.livejournal.com]

My family on my mother's side was always very close-knit...and there was a group of five of us cousins who were always together: Tommy, Scotty, Chrissy, Jenny, and Monica. Yep. Guess which one was me. All happy-go-lucky kids (except me), no real academic standouts (except me), all involved in either group sports or cheerleeading (except me), all married now with kids and houses in the suburbs and respectable jobs and SUVs (except me). Would a name with a "-y" on the end have made me turn out "normal" like the rest of them? I dunno. I often wonder how growing up with the "burden" of a serious name effects a person. I mean, although my name seems to suit me now, I wonder if I would've turned out to be the same sort of person if I had a name like Shelly or Amy or Becky.

No one ever called me anything but Monica when I was a kid. My college roommate called me "Monnie" when she was trying to get on my nerves. A few guy pals call me "Mon." I had a goofy boss who used to call me "Monzie" (like Fonzie....aaaaaaay!), but I've never had a nickname that superceded my real name.

(Of course, The Boy always calls me "Rotten"...but that's another story entirely. )

And since that whole Oval Office hummer thang, I can't introduce myself to anyone without a naughty glimmer appearing in their eye. Drives me fucking crazy. Yes...I've got brown hair and big hooters and my name's Monica. Ha ha....hilarious. *insert eye-roll here* I even had to throw my black beret away.

Lately, I've been thinking about my last name too. It's equally serious and nearly impossible to pronounce/spell (which is handy when telemarketers call...as anyone who fumbles with my name gets an automatic hangup). As far as I know, I'm the only person on Earth with my name...which keeps me from revealing it to anyone online. Hard to maintain any measure of anonymity when you know that a Google search of your name points to you and only you. My sister married an Anderson and took his name. The Boy has an equally pedestrian last name...and, although I always said I'd never take some else's name if I married, I've been seriously considering it now that the opportunity has presented itself. The Boy thinks I'm crazy to even think about changing it...but he hasn't had to live with a name that needs to be spelled out slowly and repeated constantly and is still mispronounced 75% of the time.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

I love the name 'Meredith'. It sounds like a beautiful woman, not just some ordinary schmo. Possibly she's a bit remote or haughty, but hardly unapproachable.

On the other hand, I feel like most people, myself included, can separate these sorts of connotations from real life people. I don't offhandedly recall ever thinking 'Wow, I sure like this girl! Too bad about her funny name!'

Maybe I should have.

I don't like it when my patients, or nurses, address me by my first name. Though in the name of friendliness it has to be tolerated in both cases, it feels wrong to me. When I return a page, "Hello, this is Dr. Filippi returning."

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

> I don't like it when my patients, or nurses, address me by my
> first name. Though in the name of friendliness it has to be
> tolerated in both cases, it feels wrong to me. When I
> return a page, "Hello, this is Dr. Filippi returning."

I prefer my clients to call me by my first name rather than "Dr. W------." I like a more egalitarian approach.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I have no objection to your name. Anyone who thinks it sounds "stuffy" probably thinks words with more than two syllables are "stuffy".

Let's start with the fact that my legal name is Ronny (people who call me "Ronald" get negative points real fast). As i grew up in Ecuador, this name was fine (even if people spelled it sometimes with one 'n' or, worse, with an 'i'), but when i came back to the US, i wanted to be called Ron. However, whenever i'm speaking in Spanish, i still call myself Ronny, mainly because "ron" means "rum" in Spanish, and i just don't need that sort of humor in my life. One exception: my godfather always addressed me as "Ronnie", but i haven't contacted him in a long time. Few people call me Ronny; i don't object to it as long as i have a certain familiarity with that person.

Now, my surname's always been a bit of a pain; in Ecuador, everyone wanted to call me "Echeverría", a more common variant in Ecuador; in Colombia, people wanted to spell it with a 'y' at the end. I considered anglicizing it when i came to the US, but i didn't want to deal with the hassle (i will mention in passing my uncles Joe Smith, né Octavio de Jesús Echeverri, and Ronald McKenzie, né Luis Albeiro Echeverri; this is one of the effects of the Echeverri gene). Of course, now i like having a cool ethnic surname, even if i have to spell it every goddamned time on the phone, and half-everybody doesn't seem to know how to pronounce it.

Then there's "rone", which was the username i was assigned when i started working for the UCS at USC. My Pakistani coworkers started calling me "rone" (sounds like "roan"), and i liked it, so i'll respond to it whenever i am (rarely) called by that name. Then there was the period of time when i went by 5150 on the Net; i gave that up after i quit Best Internet and canceled my Netcom account. I'm not sure if i grew up, so much as just getting tired of going by "rone" in my work e-mail and "5150" in my personal e-mail.

I suppose i'd prefer it if people called me rone. It's unique (as far as i can tell), but close enough to my real name. But i'm not going to insist on it, because it's not that important.

[dfan.livejournal.com]

My parents called me Daniel as a kid, rather than Dan or Danny, so that's what I always went by. I made a conscious effort when I was around 16 to be a normal person and not a little snivelly nerdy kid, and going by Dan instead seemed to go along with that.

I now totally feel like a Dan, and when my parents call me Daniel (as they still do), it feels kind of weird. Meanwhile, my sister's fiance is also a Dan whose parents call him Daniel, which causes all sorts of hilarity.

Once in college I was trying to type 'dan' and it came out 'dfan', and I thought it would be a handy way to disambiguate myself from all the other Dans in the online world. I never use it in the real world, but sometimes people who have first met me online call me dfan (pronounced 'dee-fan', and it's kind of cute.

I like the name Meredith.

[tigresse.livejournal.com]

With a name like Joan, there is nothing to like or dislike. It simply is. I've always considered it to be rather like an alias.

As a child, and to some branches of family memebers, I was/still am Joanie. I suppose I prefer this to Joan as it, at least, suggests a playfullness that I have. But I feel silly introducing myself as such and let people find their own way to that nickname. In college (the early years), I was called Reptile because of my cold hands and feet. Some people now call me bug. One calls me tigresse. My pastry chef always called me Jeanne (as in jeanne d'arc), as Joan was not a name he could pronounce in a normal fashion (he had to slow down speech and say JO-en).
One friend calls me Mrs. Lady-Woman. One of my brothers went through a phase of calling me Swoosie (after we'd seen True Stories, in which Swoosie Kurtz played the laziest woman in the world).

In all, I'd have to say I feel unconnected to my name.

names

[elsibeth.livejournal.com]

My name is Elsibeth, and if you say it fast, it sounds like 'Elspeth', so I go by that too; but either way, people always have shorten'd it to 'Elsie', and real close friends and fambly often call me 'Else'.

I had lots of stage names when I was stripping. 'Aspasia' became my regular one, but I also used 'Annie', since my middle name is Ann, 'Kit', 'Dolly', and 'Tiffany' (duh). I wish so hard that I had thought of 'Snowflake', following that old t.b thread, but I didn't.

I like 'Meredith', btw. It's euphonious and melodious.

[frosch.livejournal.com]

You carry "Meredith" well. You're exactly the kind of person who should be named "Meredith". (I have an uncle named Owen Meredith, who has always signed his name "O.M. Carroll" and gone by "Bill". He is a much different kind of person than you are, and "Meredith" doesn't fit him at all.)

I can't really escape the scatological implications of "merde", and thus it seems vaguely gooleyesque to me.

I was supposed to be "Jill". My parents tried four times to have a girl, and after the fourth son they gave up. "Jeffrey" is probably not the name I would have chosen for myself, and early in life it seemed frivolous, but as I have gotten older, so have all the other Jeffreys of the Baby Boom, so it doesn't seem so much so any more. I'm pretty much over whatever embarrassment I once felt about my name; gradually I came to realize that what I took as embarrassment about my name was really embarrassment about being me, and by the time I was 30 I had pretty much worked through those issues.

My wife has taken lately to calling me "Jeffy", which I will take from her but no one else; consider yourself warned. Before that, she (and her son, and much of her family) called me "Jeffro", which I'm not crazy about, even from her.

"Frosch" is German for "frog", and refers back to an episode in my second-year high school German class. Many of my friends - and some of their parents - called me "Frosch" or "Frog" throughout high school. I was "Chip" to a few other friends for a while.

When I was looking for an AOL handle in '94, "Frosch" seemed a logical choice, although I had to settle for "xfrosch" because "frosch" was already taken by somebody who was actually named Frosch. The upside of that choice is that I have never, ever encountered anyone else who wanted "xfrosch" as a handle (although there was some dweeb on undernet for a while who got pretty bent out of shape at me when I used "xf").

I wasn't surprised last summer when a member of my project team by the name of "Strom" started receiving email addressed to "Storm", or when that nickname started to stick to him. I was surprised when the guy at the next desk, a Ghanaian gentleman by the name of "Kwaku Owusu-Tieku", started receiving email addressed to "Quake". After a while we started to refer to the Japanese-speaking Mormon on this team as "Tsunami".

I myself am a shameless coiner of nicknames, having dubbed a female member of my other development team "Bill", and a 6'5", 300lb+ male member of the same team "Too Tall". I teased my youngest brother by calling him "Rhino" for years, far beyond the point at which no one really thought it was funny any more.

[(Anonymous)]

I love the name Meredith. It reminds me of the same girl from high school that kwakhed mentioned. We were pretty close for a few years and I thought she was one of the coolest girls I'd ever met - very funny, honest, with an amazing smile. I always called her Mer.
My given name is Kerensa, but from babyhood on, my family called me Keri. I went by Keri or Ker up until around age 19. (Although a few people did call me Krensi, which is what my father still calls me.) After that, I completely fell in love with my name. I can't imagine letting anyone new in my life call me Keri. Some of my family has transitioned into calling me Kerensa, but I know others won't bother. It's okay, though. If my brother doesn't complain about being called Davey at age 35, then who I am to complain about being called Keri!!!

[kwakhed.livejournal.com]

did you want to get in on the whole lj craziness? i can get you a code if you do... just let me know...

[(Anonymous)]

I'd love to, but I really can't at this point. The only internet access I have is at work and I shouldn't even be on the net unless it's work related. Oh, well - let 'em fire me!
Jeremy turned me on to his journal as a way of keeping tabs on him! So, I check it out every couple of days to see what's new and interesting among his friends, since I know a couple of them. I appreciate the offer, though. Thanks!
K