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LinnaeaBorealis -> RE: By any other name... (5/9/2011 9:47:35 AM)
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This is a fun thread! The name that I use here is the botanical name of the flower for which I was named. Each of my mother's Norwegian family members came up with the name, depending on who was telling the story. [8D]
When I was born, there was a smallpox epidemic in Seattle. I was the 2nd child & 6 weeks early, so they hadn't come up with my name yet. They thought they had plenty of time, after all. So my mother gets rushed to the hospital, my father is at the University taking a test, I was born & the only way they had to communicate with each other was by mail. When the people came around for a name for my birth certificate, my mother must have been drugged, because she told them my name was Beatrice Louise.
After 10 days--yeah, I'm really farkin' old--she brought me home from the hospital & introduced me to her family. They had a collective hissy & insisted that she rename me Linea Christine. They all liked the name, but none of them knew how it was supposed to be spelled, so they left out one of the N's.
I am extremely shy & I really hated my name because the American children couldn't pronounce it properly & they would forget it, so I was always correcting or reminding people what this really odd name was. I went to 3 high schools & by the 2nd one, I'd decided to shorten it to a more American name, Lyn. Fast forward several decades & I decided to reclaim my given name & by then I didn't care if people mispronounced it, I would even mispronounce it when introducing myself to make it easier on them.
After my last divorce, I decided that I wanted to take the Norwegian family name, which is the name of the farm where my Grandfather was born, outside of Oslo. I also dropped my middle name because whenever I used both names, I could hear my mother screeching at me when she was angry.
I like this wonderful ethnic name & I like that it's misspelled, because it's me.
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