I just had to share this

In the past few months at church, I've seen two little girls baptized with names we all know: Arwen and Eowyn. The preacher said Arwen was a Celtic name; I leaned over to my friend next to me and told her, "It's a Tolkien name." They are, of course, cute little girls.

Wow, I haven't seen any Tolkien names around here. Fun.

:)

Arwen is a welsh name meaning 'fair' apparently. Or, it's a variant of Arwenna which means muse.

Tis a pretty name I think.

Yes. Tolkien names are indeed lovely!

*goes off to call his niece, Shelob*

whatta coincidence JPB, that was my first wife's name!

Wow. I had to go off to check the swedish name statistics. Apparently there are 31 Eowyn registered, 6 of which has it as their first/use name. 109 Arwen, 25 of which has it as their use name.

Then I checked for Galadriel - 35/2 is the numbers there. Amazing.

Of course I then had to check some male names -
Aragorn - 40/2
Gandalf - 25/7
Elrond - 5/0
Frodo - 21/3
Bilbo - 52/13
Legolas - 43/6 (this was a surprise, Legolas was the name of a famous racehorse and I though people wouldn't want their child to have a horse name)

Then I stopped.

Frodo? Gandalf? really? ~huh~

my dog maybe, but not my child... but to each his own. ;P

Well, I don't disagree. I find it odd to name your child after a fairly well-known fictional character. Some of these people might well be in their mid-30's, though, as LoTR was hugely popular here in the 70's.

Then I'm not one to judge. My son is named after a famous and still living Brazilian footballer...

Frodo Lives!

people should feel free to name thier child unusual names, its a shame that childrenwith unusual names get made fun of.

As having a very unusual name I can only agree. Some names lend themselves to the mercy of not so kind children, though.
"Evil" is not always intentional, or even understood by the one delivering it...

unusual names are fine..
normal names with ridiculous spellings are VERY bad

why curse your child with a name that will never be spelled correctly their whole life? I hate it when my name is spelled wrong :P

Do they make fun of unusual names still? unusual has become common....

I thought I remembered reading somewhere in Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century that in his work Tolkien only used names he had discovered in all the old writings he studied. So, theoretically at least, he took real names and gave them to his fictional characters. People shouldn't have any qualms about using them. ;o)

mckait - you wouldn't believe the amount of times my name had been spelled incorrectly, I wouldn't be so worried but it is a normal run of the mill name, Kelly. and the surname... Brookbank. I give my work email address out so often to callers kelly.brookbank@... so many people can't spell. I was offended when someone said dear mr brookbank I spoke to you earlier.... do I sound like a man? ... grrr ... My favourite mispelling must be kill brooksbonk, well it had me entertained

Eowyn is a lovely name and one reserved for one of my chooks, I went to school with twins Arthur and Guinevere they really hate their parents I think that is by far the worst I have come accross so far. Yet we have had an applicant called Rose Krapa, which really is unfortunate.

My husband hate's his full name Robin Fergal Doone Brookbank, where we grew up there were lots of female Robin's and male Kelly's so we both felt a bit out of place.

My friends got lots of little girls and they are all welsh names, Rhiannon, Rosanwyn, Rhysann, Morwenna, Morganne, Rhodri and Ceri. She's really welsh as well and when she speaks about them their names just sound so lush, when I say them it comes out a bit somersetified.

I just accept that people tend to think of me as a misspelled male - my name is similar to a common male name. My name is me, very much so, and it being unusual is only distinguishing. Which is good. People tend to remember me. I'm not averse to that.

Giving my son an unusual and hard to spell name - I have no qualms. Being one of a kind is good. Having to share a name with hundreds of others is obscuring the individual.
Names are important - they are who we are (naturally I never even considered changing my surname to that of my husband when we married; my name is me, changing it would be changing what I am).

I live those names!

I went with simple, short names for my kids.. my name is kathleen, and i have been called every possible nic . I like kathleen, but gave up years ago.

Even with short names like Adam ( ad) Craig ( C) Amy ( aim) and Cory ( cor)
they shortened.

sigh
I should have gone with ore syllables and let them sort it out~

I know people with names like Terry who spell it Tairi
and that sor of thing,.. I hate it when people use a C for me.. :P
I worked in a classroom for 1.5 yrs and the teacher not only refused to use K she gave my spelling out to parents as C. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I just can't emagine caling out to my child.. hey frodo! lol
but as I said, to each his own.

I just don't know that I could have called either of my sons Frodo or Gandalf. I couldn't have used Merry either. I can only imagine what they would be like in school! Arwen and Eowyn are such poetic names for girls though.

When I was in the banking world, I had a customer named Robin Hood. He was a middle-aged business man and didn't fit his name at all. I also knew a Kunte Kente (plus a last name I can't remember). There was another regular who was named Clyde, but she was a she. As a teacher, I've had Kimbriyada, Quinterious, LaDarius, Asia, Nakedrick (and it's definitely not pronounced Naked Rick!), and Quanshella. What's interesting is that by the time they get to the 8th grade, many of them decide they want to be called a shorter version of their name, one that isn't quite as strange, like Kim, Quint, and Shella. Back in his pizza delivering days, my husband delivered a pizza to a man whose name was Richard Head. (It was printed on his check.)

Of course, I named my son Erik, and he's never quite forgiven me for the K on the end rather than the more common US spelling Eric.

I also have a very easy to pronounce last name (although not a very common one), but it's been butchered in ways you wouldn't believe.

Too funny hobbitprincess. I named my daughter Erika with a K instead of a common c. However, I named her after my mother who spells it with a K.
I have seen unusual names in my profession also.The first day of school I had a child with the name Dakota. I was expecting a girl and when I young boy walked in I was caught off guard. I now ask our secretary to put the sex of the child next to the name so I won't make that mistake again.lol

Long ago, when I worked for an insurance agent, I saw a file with someone who was named Seymour Pecker. I kid you not. I saw the driver's license.

My dad once had to run a drivers license check on a Delicious Peters. Peters was her married name. It must have been true love...

My friend Kathy Riehsen was married to John Peter. She refused to hyphenate her name.

I know two guys named Jerker. Not extremely uncommon in Sweden, but a bit strange in english-speaking countries. One now lives in the Chicago area and calls himself Jay. The other one introduces himself as Jack in the anglo-american world.

I went to school with a Merry~ loved that name!

A friend of mine has a young girl in her 1st grade class named K-ia. After calling her Kia at open house, the child's mother corrected the teacher. She said the child's name is pronounced Ka-dash-ia. "The - is not silent."

Promise. True story.

I like names that are uncommon, but I don't like names that are embarrassing or can be made fun of easily. It's just not fair to the child.

In college I dated a fellow whose last name was Butt. Nice guy, a little senstive about the last name. Once made me look up in the school directory (which covered three colleges) to see if anyone else had the same last name. I was surprised to find a woman whose last name was Butts. He wasn't comforted much. He wasn't from the States, and I never found out if Butt was a common name in his home country.

ETA: Okay, I'll admit it. If we had married, I probably wouldn't have taken his surname, but kept my own.

We wanted our daughter to have a first name that would sound as good when she was 2 months as it would when she was 92. Also, something that wouldn't easily be made into a nickname. We picked Jenna, and Marie - which is also my middle name.

My parents also chose names for us girls that wouldn't be made into nicknames and it's mostly worked - Karen and Laura. (my sister hates it when she gets called Laurie.)

Nobody used to ask me how I spelled my name, but in the last 10 years or so I have to spell it so it doesn't get spelled with a C.... just like you mckait. Strange variations are Karin, Karyn, Carin, Caryn, Caren. Bleh.

I took my husband's last name so that when we had a family we would all have the same last name. Bless his heart, when he proposed, he asked if I was going to take his name or keep mine.

A friend of mine kept her name when she married. Her daughter's last name is her last name, her son's last name is her husband's last name. And, to make it more confusing, the daughter's middle name is my friend's husband's last name and the son's middle name is my friend's last name. Double bleh.

Sarah A
Scott B
Daughter B A
Son A B

I love my name (Mary), but I went through an adolescent phase where I tried to spell it Mari, Marri, Merry, Meri, and Merrie. (With little hearts to dot the i's, of course). The thing is, I outgrew it. When I see ordinary names with weird spellings, I assume the parents were a bit immature. (Michaela doesn't need to be Mikaila or Meckayla)

One of our recent high school graduates was named Pebbles. She was on my speech team, and I spent a lot of time convincing meet directors that it was her real name. ("Yeah, I don't get it either, but...")

PS: I experimented a lot with my name, but I absolutely drew the line at Mare. I'm not a horse.

I grew up with having a mother married to my father but with a different surname. She felt very strong associations with her surname - she and her brothers are very strongly bonded. Personally I thought it totally natural, and never had any problems from it.

Today I might had wanted her surname instead of my father's, as I feel more connected with her family, but growing up it was almost the other way around and whatever I'd want my name is my name, which is me ;-)

Oh I forgot about my friend in college. Her name was Gay. She use to follow telling people her name with the statement. "My name not my reputation".

I have heard this story from several different teachers at the school I work at, and at different times so I can be fairly certain it is true. There apparently was this little girl at my school named Shithead...

pronounced: Shi-th-ayd putting the 'th' together.

That tops any of the kids names I've personally had in my classes, athough I have had some doozies!

:D

PS: I *love* the K-ia!

@ 1- That's so cool! I'd consider naming a girl Eowyn. *adds that to ever growing name list*

@ 6- I didn't know that you could look up stats like that. I wonder if these are all Tolkien inspired?

@ 24- That's hysterical, but the poor kid! I'd hate to have to explain that my whole life.

Emma is not easy to nickname. Two people call me Em, one person calls me Emmers, and no one calls me Emmie and lives to tell about it. :) It's a good thing I like my name.

I love when people change spellings in a reasonable fashion. I teach a student whose name is "Wynter", and a friend's sister is "Cameryn". Then there's my very AMERICAN friends, both with very all-American names, who wanted to name their second child, a girl, Zoe. All well and good; it's a beautiful name. Except, Zoe was too tame for them, so they went with Zoyenka (Zoy-yank-a). Not that it's a bad name, it's just really hard to pronounce and spell if you don't live in the Ukraine. Why they didn't just stick with Zoe I'll never understand- that's all anyone ever calls her.

#31 - I'm pretty sure they're all Tolkien-inspired, possibly with the exception of Frodo, which could be an alternative spelling of Frode (which is not a swedish name but a norwegian one, but there's enough of both kinds of names in the border regions).

In Sweden it's possible to look up these stats as we have an agency devoted to a) collect all national statistics and b) naming is made after official approval only. This means a proposed name can be rejected. I'm sure I've told this before, but an acquaintance of mine tried to give one of his (several) kids a Muslim name but this was denied on grounds of neither him or the child's mother not being ethnically (or confessionally) Muslim.

I haven't come across too many people of my generation with my name (Amber). It seems to be much more common these days though.

The story goes that my mother not only liked the name, but felt it was fitting as the women in my family for five generations have all had red (various shades) hair and amber is considered to be a variation on red ( personally I've always thought it was more golden in nature *shrugs*) , I even have a cousin with red hair. Unfortunately, it didn't work with me. (I'm a blonde :) ).

Another name note- my 2 sisters and I all have names that begin with A and our middle names are in alphabetical order from oldest (me) to youngest (to make it even weirder we are all 6 1/2 years apart in age).

*edited for spelling error*

I like common names that are spelled different. My sons Antony (as in Marc Antony) and Jordan (not that odd but everyone wants to spell it with an 'o' instead on an 'a'.) My husband is Robert E. Lee and we were tempted to name one of our kids Brock. We just couldn't do it.

My husband and I both work with the public and it's amazing what people will name their kids.

my children all have Normal comman names except my Daughter is named mary Elisabeth EliSabeth rather then EliZabeth. She hates it! I don't know why! I named my son Steven Issac. the issac after my MIL's father, thinking it would please her. It didn't. When I told her She said "That ol' s--of a b-----! Why'd you name a kid after him! So people! name your kids whatever you want! Somebody somewhere will hate it!

As a teacher, I do my best to pronounce a student's name correctly. I hate it when parents name their child something bizarre and then get upset with me for mispronouncing it during open house before school has even started.

Sometimes strange names I encounter are from a particular nationality, so I don't count those as odd. I had a student named Khadijah once, but I learned that it is a fairly common name in Africa, and her mother was from one of the African countries, so the name made sense. It's the strange made-up names that I don't understand. Well, and the odd placement of assorted punctuation marks (like poor K-ia). I have a Te'yanna now. I just don't get it.

#27 - I had a class this summer with someone named Pebbles, and she told us that that was her real name. Surely it isn't the same person?? She is a teacher here in Georgia - I can't remember where - north Atlanta maybe.

# 27 & 36

ye gods! I do hope it was the same person...

Although I do believe K-ia wins the contest for ridiculous names...

We had two cats named Merry and Pippin.

Printed a business card years ago for an unfortunate fellow named "Growcock," I kid you not. Don't recall his first name. Will never forget his last.

The real problems start coming up at graduation ceremonies, especially at university. That's when you have someone reading out all the names who has never met the people in question. My university has a lot of foreign students, particularly from east and south Asia. The poor Dean has to read all these Chinese names like Qi Xiangzhang, without having a clue how to pronounce it. Imagine having your parents fly all the way in and video your graduation, only to have them unsure whether it was your name they called because it was mangled so much. That's why the university has started employing me to read the names out for the graduation ceremony where 80% of the students have non-English names. I have no problems with them, because I know the spelling conventions and how the language works.

One of my ideas for the future is to start some sort of consultancy that runs training for companies. I'd go in there and teach them how to recognise and pronounce names from common languages in the community. I wonder if I could convince them to actually pay me to do it. I know it would be a great thing to do, PR-wise. A Chinese or Indian client will be much more responsive if you call him/her up and pronounce their name correctly and without hesitation, and know which one is his family name and which his first name. Given the rates of foreign investment here and the number of foreign-born citizens we have, there's the need. If only I could get the demand and the publicity...

Will... that is wonderful!

all of it!

Will, I agree with mckait. I think there would certainly be a market for your services.....your consulting services....language consulting services. You know what I mean! :)

Hobbitprincess: Nope. We have two Pebbles. (If we get any more, we'll have Gravel.)

My Pebbles is at present going to beauty school in North Platte, Nebraska.

Arwen & Eowyn are very pretty girls names!!!

& Will I agree with others, sounds like you've got a pretty good business idea there!

As for names that seem cruel, I dealt with a customer once whose name was Dwayne, which doesnt seem so bad, except that his suname was Pipe - what were his parents thinking??? & one customer whose name was lost in translation, i cant remember the correct spelling but it was pronounced like See Me Hang - i couldn't help but laugh...

#26 My name is Karen, too, and my sister shortens it to Ren. But nicknames are big in my family.

My mother's first name is Borgny, which is unusual even in Norway, and she got so tired of explaining it that she named all of us kids the most popular and boring names in America at that time. Probably why we all give each other nicknames.

There is a person in my community whose first and middle names are Nevada Romance. I've always wanted to ask if her parents eloped.

Im glad my parents settled with a nice, fairly plain name... Bernice... no second names... no family names... just Bernice...
Its not very common, but also not unheard of, I have only met 5 other people in South Africa that have the same name (and spelling) as me.
It does anoy me a bit that soapies almost always have a 'crazy aunt Bernice' somewhere in the mix though... and I loath it being contracted to 'Bernie', but on the whole Im quite satisfied.

I pity kids that get given strange names, there is nothing more cruel to children than other children (speaking from experience here!), if there is the remotest chance of tormenting a weaker or shyer class mate they grab on with both hands and never let go!

Our youngest was born in the Netherlands and we wanted to include a name that linked him to it so we used Jan (pr. Yann) as a middle name. Now we're not sure if we shouldn't have picked something else. If we go back to the UK, Jan (as in Janet) is definitely a woman's name. Oh well, he's a pretty tough skinned little thing.

I've never been too concerned about the "kids teasing other children based on names" thing. If it wasn't the name it would be something else, you can't protect them from it. What really gets me is parents who don't think about the fact that they're not just naming a child, they're naming a person who will have to live with that name when they're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and so on. Think about putting some of those names on resumes and job applications. With some of them (I'm looking at you K-ia), people in recruitment might just decide that the person is slapdash and careless with their spelling/typing etc and discount them from the start.

Funky spellings and weird names do not comprise a person's personality. Yes, your name is important, it's part of who you are, but you can't make someone interesting, unique or self-confident by giving them a "different" name.

While I agree on the part of funky spellings my name is a conversation starter, for sure, and if it tells something about your background, well - that might make you interesting ;-)
Jokes aside, in my experience having to live with a different (not weird - different) name shapes your personality. And either it strengthens you or you grow to hate it.

What I meant with my name being important to me, though, was the fact that due to the uniqueness of it if I cast it away today I would no longer be recognised as "me", me being a person of some renown within my admittedly narrow field. In that way my name is a career asset, and I recognise it as such.
Also, on a more personal level, it's a link to my ancestors. Something which I like. I think people who change their surname when they marry denounces their own heritage, in a way. I don't judge others by it, most people don't think like I do, but to me it's rather disgraceful. My connection is to MY parents, not to my husband's father's line.

@48: you can always come to South Africa... Jan (pronounced Yann) is a very common Afrikaans boys name here :)

@49: I agree with you!

Im just bugged by people who name thier kids seemingly out of a sence of 'non conformaty'... just because they dont give a blue hoot about what people think about them... does NOT give them the right to saddle thier poor kids with a giant flashing target that sais "Tease here!" Or to lable them with an absolute doozi, that no one can pronounce or dicipher without having studied advanced Greek linguistics... thats what pets are for ;)

Sorry... my personal little rant over... will be good now...

#51 - I can see your point, but perhaps me coming from a country where a national agency controls who can be named what has coloured me somewhat? Because here you can't give your child whichever fancy name. K-ia would never had happened here. NEVER. Period.

You can, when you are old enough, try to change your name to some fancy spelling if you like to spend the energy. The national agency is sure to block most of these fancies. So people here carrying weird or funky spellings aren't officially doing so - it's their own inventions, and it won't get into any roll call. And they know it.

So. You can name your kid Annika, Annica, or Annikka. But AnNiqa, Aniqua etcetera are either born outside this country, to another nationality, or they are really, in any official papers, just Annika.

This practise has made both weird names and weird spellings scarce here. So it's not a problem I have ever encountered.

My name is of Danish origin. As I was born in the city of Malmö, a 30 minute train ride from the danish capital, I don't think it totally inappropriate. It's about as weird as it gets around here.

#51 - If you, or anyone else, think our choosing an unusual name for our son (Zico) makes us idiots you are welcome. We didn't want him to have the same name as everyone else. When I grew up I had 3 Carina and 2 Magnus for class mates. Confusing, to say the least. And that was only in my class. There where more.

Kids are cruel, period. They can always find a way to tease. I mean, they went from Lenora to menorah to manure. Come on!

The men in my family have very common names - Sean, John, Tom, etc. The only uncommon one is my nephew, Miles.

The women have slightly unusual, but not weird names - Eula, Jozie, Dale, Lenora, Anya (last five generations).

I finally got tired of having my name mangled to Laura, Lorraine, Eleanor, Leonora, Lenore so now I introduce myself as Nora. I only use Lenora for checks and contracts.

> 53 Busifer, is it true also in Sweden (as it is in Denmark) that when you talk about your "class," you mean the 20-some students that you went to school with, in the same classroom, for years?

I was an exchange student in Denmark, and I wound up in a classroom with about 15-20 students who had been together for at least the 3 years of gymnasium (equivalent to our high school), if not also in primary school (grades 1-10). We had three Lene's in our little classroom, alone. Each of them had a different way to tell them apart in discussion.

This is not the same as in the States, where your "class" means everyone who graduated that year. In my little town, we had 68 people in my graduating class. Some schools are so big, their graduating classes are in the hundreds. Not many students truly stand out from the pack, in those places.

#55 - Yes, class here means a group of roughly 30 people who spend year upon year together, in the same classroom.
An US 'class' could roughly be translated to 'grade' here, I think. Depending on the size of the school this is about 90-120 people, divided in classes, each with it's own head teacher.

#35 - We had chosen the name Elisabeth (with 's' not 'z') when I was pregnant the first time (we had a boy) but used it for our daughter when she was born later that year.

We chose an unusual name for our son but not too out-there. Ally MacRae. We had decided not to find out the baby's sex before the birth but circumstances meant we needed to chose a name that could suit either sex. We knew Ally was the right name as soon as we said it and it suited him when he was born. Just after he was born I chose to add MacRae as it fit so well and was my Granddad's middle name, an old family name from our Scottish roots.

Elisabeth is more 'normal' other than the spelling being a bit different and we gave her Grace as a middle name.

With BRE we have almost settled on the very 'normal' Joseph Robert for a boy (although I keep telling my nephew it might still be Doctor John Smith Timelord Tardis Gallifray.

If BRE is a girl we have so many names but the current favourite is the name of a planet combined with two Doctor Who themed middle names. I'm not saying what it is yet but it shouldn't sound too weird if we use it. It's Andrew's fault, he flat out refused to let me call BRE Ingrid or Jerusha but I'm holding firm on this one.

My FIL's wife (most definitely NOT my MIL, who passed away a few years ago) has a granddaughter named Cherith. Isn't that a beautiful name? I have no idea what the origin of it may be. I've never met the mother to ask her.

When naming our kids, we wanted both boys to go by their first names or some logical derivative of it (Andrew, call him Andy). I grew up going by a shortened version of my middle name, as did my husband. We both hated it (not the names, just the explaining). In fact, in college, I gave up totally and just let them think I was called Susan. It wasn't worth explaining that no one ever called me that for one class and a professor I probably wouldn't have again. When I got married, I dropped that first name I never used and took my maiden name for a middle name. Of course, it is handy when we get those sales calls - if someone refers to my husband as "Charles", they obviously don't know him!

Ah, the challenge of names!

Being a teacher ruled out LOTS of names when it came to selecting a name.

We settled on Peter (strong boy name, not many young Peters around and all those we knew were nice!), Kirrilly Joy (pronounced kir-i-lee, which some people struggle to pronounce and spell...even grandparents sometimes...ahem. Joy because David likes abstract nouns for names) and for the baby, Meredith Grace (Meredith...again not many little Merediths around these days, and Grace, because David likes abstract nouns!)

Unusual names of students I have taught....Grace Monaco, Napoleon, Tweety, and the TWINS Steve and Steven, to name just a few.

Graduations....you get to hear the long list of long-dead relatives names that can be most amusing!

57 - Raxicoricofallapetorius?

The 10 year old twins across the street are Ridge and Riggin. I don't get it either. We get lots of names around here designed to sound good over a rodeo loudspeaker. Lash, Colt, Trey, Rocky, Cash, Tripp, Jedd, Judd, Cort, Clete. I know of three brothers from a neighboring town named Cinch, Tye, and Latigo. Another family with the surname Boots have two sons: Tony Lama and Justin.

Just my quirk: I love family names. I always felt a little special because I shared my names with Mom, Grandma, Aunt Lou, etc.

ETA: I had to look up Latigo when I moved here - but it is a legitimate part of a saddle, just like Cinch and Tye (tie).

When we were picking names, we ruled out John, on the grounds that it wouldn't go with the surname, Bohn. It would either sound like

John Bonn
or
Joan Bohn.

So it would look like it rhymed, but it really wouldn't. Still, everyone mispronounces our last name. But at least they get my children's first names right.

#62 - How do you pronounce your name?

#63 MrsLee - that was going to be question too!

Like Bone. In fact, when I have to do a name tag for something, I draw a little bone and then write 'BOHN' inside.

:) I like the idea of a graphic to go with your name, but mine is Swetnika, and it's pronounced like sweat nika. I don't think I want to draw sweat. It's amazing the lengths people will go to not to say "sweat."

#60 - Will! You guessed it!

*grins* I'm not sure about the spelling though. When I first heard it, I wanted to spell it Wraxichoricophelapetorius, but then I saw it written down and it was more like the way I spelled it earlier. I can't remember how they wrote it down.

#61. I think it really depends on the name itself. Some are ok, but others just shouldn't be inflicted on the next generation!

i have simple relatively common first name Sarah - though you would be amazed at how many people have problems spelling it (or my favourite writing 'Mr Sarah'), and an unusual surname (made of my father's family's surname (Ing) and my great grandmother's maiden name).

If it is not that important (booking a table at the restaurant over the phone) I will use a common simplified version, much easier to book for Peter than Raxicoricofallapetorius :-) My sister for many years used a very simple derivative for her work in sales and marketing - for much the same reason

It worked for me, I like my surname it is unusual, but it has a history, but a weird first name would have been too much.

We have the opposite problem sometimes, when everyone has the same name. Someone calls it out and my kids all turn their heads to see if it's them.

Sorta like saying "Mary!" at our family reunions. My mama: Mary Alice, me: Mary Lou, my daughter: Mary Leigh, and my grand-daughter: Mary Hannah. Mom and I go by both names, my daughter usually is just Mary, and my grand-daughter is Hannah.

My grandmother was Mary Helen (usually just Helen), and her mother was Mary Armstrong. I love my name.

Six generations of Marys. That's impressive, and a lovely connection to your ancestors and descendants. No wonder you like your name!

My initials, before I got married, were KP. My husband, 'way back even before we started dating, called me KayPee. That's what he always calls me unless he's mad at me. Then, just like I was a kid, I'm Karen. But anyway.

My Mother-in-Law's initials before she married my Father-in-Law, were KP too. One time only, in my 18 years of marriage, my FiL said "KayPee!", trying to get his wife's attention, and both of us turned around and said "What?" He's never called her KayPee in my presence since.

My name is 'Si.' "Just like the mountain," I tell people. OK, so only Washingtonians will get that.

I'm partially named for my grandfather (father's father) who's name was Cy. Well, actually his name was Ralph, but that's another story.