Friday, June 8

By Any Other Name

I was reading blog posts recently, and came upon this one of Rosemary's about names:


http://rosemarys-attic.blogspot.com/2007/06/rosemary-by-any-other-name-would.html

It made me remember the names that were considered for me - and how glad I am that they didn't pass muster. See, I could have been named by two different people - my birth mother and my adoptive mother. None of their choices was acceptable to me, and I have had to warm up to the idea of being called Judy all my life. But Judy is better than the other possible choices. My mom considered naming me after my two grandmothers, and I would have been "Cora Rose."



The Rose is fine, but the Cora was not and I am forever grateful that she decided against that.



My birth mother, whom I met at the ripe old age of 57 (my age, not hers), confided that she would have named me after her favorite singer - Loretta Lynn. Again, the Lynn was acceptable, but Loretta is one of worst possible choices for me (others being Gertrude, Hortense, Priscilla and the like, all of which were possibles in 1940 when I was born).



Had I been of an age to say what I might like for a name, I would have chosen Elizabeth, which was my adoptive mother's middle name and always a favorite. Kathryn (spelled like that) is another favorite.


So, tell me. What do you think of the name you were given and would you have preferred another?

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess I'm happy with my name! Growing up, I always thought Heidi would be a fun name.

My mom almost named me Darcy. But she asked my siblings what they thought and they vetoed it. So, Cathy I am!

Michele sent me...

Christine said...

My name is Chirstine Anne, which is okay with me, but I've always felt it was a little plain. When naming my daughter I wanted something pretty and feminine, unique, but not TOO unique. We decided on Gabriella Marie, which I really hesitated on, because I really don't care for the nickname Gabby. But lucky for us, when she started to talk she called herself Ella, and it has stuck. And she actually likes to go by Gabriella. I wonder what she will think of it when she's all grown up!

rosemary said...

Thank you Judy for the link...I had to grow into Rosemary. Mine was an odd name at a time when names like....Vicki and Cheryl...were popular. I don't have a middle name so that was weird at the time too...there was Cheryl Ann, Mary Madeline and Margaret Mary..and just plain old rosemary. When I asked my mom why I didn't have a middle name she said my name was pretty all by itself. Took me a few decades to buy that. Of course I could have been MaeDell, or Ethyl.

gemma said...

Have to say that my name has a story. My name is Gayle Elaine and the Gayle part my father selected. Somewhere along the line he spotted it, spelled in that way and decided that Gayle it would be. Originally, my middle name was to be Elizabeth. Dad also decided that the initials of my name should spell GEM, I was, until he died, my father's jewel. I never appreciated that as much as I do now. Anyhow, my mother's mother was a great reader of historic novels and she entered into the naming dance by telling my mother that Gayle Elizabeth had no romance to it. It MUST be Gayle Elaine. As the story goes, Dad never knew until I was confirmed that the middle name had been switched in the hospital. Mother loved that one and told it often. My cousin Elaine always wants me to tell the story since her first name is Elaine and therefore she is that much more romantic than I. How I love family tales.

Anna said...

I didnt like it when I was little but I like it now....there aren't that many Anna's...

I am off to the site you mentioned. Have a great weekend Cora....I MEAN JUDY! :)

The Turmanators said...

Great question! My mother considered naming me India Brooks, after a relative, and changed her mind. All my life I hated the name Amy and swore I would name my daughter (if lucky enough to have one) India Brooks. Well, after 3 years of fertility treatments I have my India! I also got a surprise Katherine 21 months later without the treatments. Katherine is my sister's name and I always coveted that one, too.

I got off pretty easy, though, with Amy. Had I been a boy my name would have been Padgett (yeah, our family is crazy for old family names...it's a Southern thing).

Visiting via Michelle today, thanks for the fun!

Thumper said...

Honestly, I have always hated my name. I was named after 2 freaking Mousketeers, for Pete's sake! My dislike for it is probably why I work professionally under my initials...I would have changed it when I hit 21, but my parents were hurt at the mere suggestion...

I wanted to be Sam. Samantha, Sammi... I still do, but I'm settling for using it in a book instead.

rennratt said...

I was given the ONLY name they chose for a girl.

They were hoping for a boy. If a boy, I would have been Michael Kevin.

I had about 6 names chosen for Nooze, and Chachi hated EVERY ONE OF THEM. (For the record, they were Norah, Nala, Mashara, Neidra, Keagen and Cera.)

Her TRUE name fits her, and was the only name we didn't hate.

If she was a boy, she would have been Braeden Alec - or Enoch Stephen.

Yep. Glad she's The Nooze.

Travelin'Oma said...

I always hated Martha, but I go by Marty and that's better. I could have been Claire, and I would love that. Like Christine, we have a Gabriele (pronounced Gob-re-ella.) It seemed beautiful at the time and we knew a darling girl with that name so it had good associations for us. However she's 37 and has never forgiven us. It's built her character, however, to always have to correct the pronunciation and spelling.

Shephard said...

My mom's name is different by spelling, and she has no middle name... so it's no wonder I took after her. The other name they might have named me was Jay. In light of what that rhymes with, I'm glad they didn't! That would have been a no-brainer for kids to grab onto.

My sister's name was Judy. Let's see, she'd be in her 50's right now, so I guess that name hung on.


~S

Suzz said...

I've always liked my first name and was told I was named for my great-grandmother. There are several sites to look up the meaning of names. Here's a good one: http://www.americanbaby.com

Anonymous said...

Well, it could be worse. You could have been Cora Loretta. LOL!

I like the name Kathryn, but I've got to say, "Just ask Kathryn" doesn't have the same great ring as Just Ask Judy. ;)

I was named after the song, Laura, in the 1960's. My dad picked that name. thank god, because my mom didn't like anything else about me, so I'm glad he had naming rights!

tiff said...

I LOVE my given name.

My dad wanted to name me Rita, so I'm pretty glad they broke out the map of Ireland and pointed to a pretty spot.

I would NOT have made a good Rita, I'm sure. If I'd been a boy, I'd been Brian. I coulda lived with that, I'm sure.

Joy Des Jardins said...

I'm not sure anyone truly loves their given name. I was never fond of mine....Joyce Lynn. I knew very few Joyce's when I was growing up, and I wanted a cool name like Lisa or Kathy or Melissa. The funny thing is noone ever called me Joyce but my family....I was known by my friends as Joy from as long as I can remember. That was okay with me.

Anonymous said...

Actually I resally dislike my name. My first name is Rosa and my second name is Leigh. I like my second name and everyone aside from my family calls me that. I dislike my first name so much in fact that I will eventually change my first name to leigh and have no second name. I couldn't really say why I dislike my name except that everyone outside of my family says that it really doesn't fit me. I already have too many issues with my identity.

Crimson said...

I like my name. Well, actually I like the name i've been called my whole life....not my actual legal first name. I had a grandma named Kathryn. =)

Andi said...

I love my name....beautiful. :-)

I am visiting from Michele's. It seems that you are very good at visiting the blogs of others...that's wonderful. I hope that you will come visit my blog sometime. :-)

Andi said...

I see that you are a floral designer. I would love it if you posted some of your work/tips. I like making flower arrangements & occasionally blog them. :-)

Andi said...

I just found some of your floral work. I still would like to see more of this. It is beautiful. Are you the one who takes the photos???

OldLady Of The Hills said...

I was of two minds about my name...It was so unique in a way---I knew one other girl with the same name----that I was a little uncomfortable with that...but the other side of that was that I liked that not many people had the same name as I did.
One of the girls in High School who was a friend was named Dorcas....I always thought that was a very unique name too...Never have known anyone else with that name...

OldLady Of The Hills said...

Incidentally Judy...About Bettie P. She didn't really make a lot of money and it's only in the last few years that she has gotten anything from all these images that are reproduced to this day. She became very very rewligious from what I understand, but never put herself down for doing what she did. The book about her is very interesting, I must say.

Carli N. Wendell said...

I was a freak of a kid, and having a unique name only made things worse.

Now that I'm older and many other people have my name (it's far more popular now), I like it. IT suits me. And I could have been named Carrie, which I really would not have liked.

Anonymous said...

Like you, I also went through the "two-name" scenario via adoption. I was orginally named after my father and was a "junior". He and my mother were divorced when I was very young and my mother remarried when I was around six. My step-dad adopted me and in the process they decided to change my whole name.

They sat me down, tried to explain the situation to me and ask if I had any preferences when it came to "first" names. At the time Alan Ladd was a big movie star and a hero of mine - consequently my first name became "Alan"!

AC said...

My folks named me after Carole Lombard. I've always been okay with that name, its kind of neither here nor there.

She originally wanted to name me Sue which I would not like. My dad, though, wanted....XAN...which he probably found in a sci fi book in the 50's. That would have turned out to be a cool name.

Panthergirl said...

Ugh, I hate my name (Marian). I would have preferred Maria (much more lilting and ethnic). I don't think there were other options on the table. My mother named me after some Catholic thing called "The Marian Year", except she had it wrong. The Marian Year was the year before I was born.

Names really do indicate how old someone is, too. When you speak to a woman on the phone named Doris or Lois or Marge, you can safely assume she's over 60.

Talk to a Jennifer and chances are she's between 25 and 30.

Debbies and Lindas are in their 50s.

Hey... this IS a good idea for a blog entry!

Anonymous said...

I have a cousin Cora. I admit I like Lynne better than Loretta. Judy and Elizabeth are nice nice, neutral palette, not forcing a direction of personality really. With two names you get a choice of which would be a better fit.

Panthergirl's point about names dating a person is bang on. Every meeting gives a faraway look to someone a person reemmbers who was old in the person's childhood.

When I was growing up I had a hankering for a more neutral invisible name that wouldn't be remarked on, like Mary or something more androgynous, like Thumper's Sam.

Anonymous said...

I have always been called Judy, except when my mother said JUDITH ANN(my given name) which meant I was in trouble. I was born in 1939, the year Wizard of Oz was made. There were 3 or 4 other Judys in my kindergarten class. My senior year I was in the girls quartet, 3 Judys and a Janet. The name doesn't seem to be popular any more, though.
Judy Kirtley

Star said...

As a child I hated my name because it was different. As an adult I like it for jusst that reason. Th other day at work, where I wear a name badge, a young man said to his pregnant wife(?) "now there's a kick-ass name". Itook it as a compliment. My oler sister as named after my mother and grandmother-Naomi Myrtle. I was always glad she was first.

Tony Gasbarro said...

I always wanted the name Tom. When I was a kid I always envied kids named Tom. It's my middle name, Thomas, but I've always gone by the shortened version of my first name, Anthony. Then I found out that I almost WAS a Tom... my parents had picked out Thomas Anthony, but my brother, my oldest sibling by 16 years, balked at the name. First, he HATED the name Tom. He didn't want a baby brother that everybody called "Tommy." And, even worse, with our last name beginning with a 'G,', he feared I would be called "Tag" all the time.

So you can imagine, once I heard that story, that I was even MORE resentful of my name. Enduring endless, relentless chori of "Tony Baloney" by every kid who had never heard the word "original," I thought "Tag" would have been a pretty cool name.

THEN, when my oldest brother, the one who "hated" the name "Tom," witnessed the birth of his first and only son, guess what they named him....

Tom.

I've grown to like the name "Tony," and actually prefer it to Anthony. I only ever heard that name used when my mother was angry with me.

Anonymous said...

I changed my name years ago, but people who knew me before still insist on using the old name. What annoys me more than them calling me the old one is how they shorten it.

Tiffany said...

I have always loved my name. You dont hear many people say that! When she was pregnant she was watching some gymnastic competition on TV. There was a "cute little blond girl" (my mothers words) and she fell in love with her name, Tiffany.

Michele sent me...

Jamie Dawn said...

I was named Jamie Dawn, so I would have the same initials as my dad, James Donald. My brother's name is Jason Donald. My mom is the odd one out. Her name is Marguerite Louise.

I think Cora Rose is a very pretty name. I completely agree with you that Loretta Lynn would not have been the best choice.

If my daughter would have been a boy, he was to be Justin James.
If my son would have been a girl, he was to be Juliet something-or-other.

craziequeen said...

As a child I craved a 'normal' name like Judy....I was given a traditional Cornish name which was unusual enough to result in bullying through my childhood. At 16 I paid to change my name legally and hid the offending name in the middle of more run of the mill names.

If I was a boy I was going to be called Benedict - Bennet for short. I wouldn't have minded that :-)

Michele sent me to see this interesting post.

cq