What's In A Name?

Weeeeellllll....not only am I bad at following rules, it seems I am also patently transparent.

Number 2 is indeed the falsehood.

However, almost all of it is true. My grandmother's name really was Wilhelmina Ernestina Steinberg. My maiden name is only one letter removed from the word "scrotum". Yeah. My high school years were not at all traumatic. You have to move a couple letters around to make it work, but it was close enough for bitchy queen bee cheerleader types.

My actual middle name is fairly mundane and is almost always used in conjunction with my first name, which is also mundane. So a boring first name, humiliating last name...is it any wonder that I fantasized endlessly about changing my name to something glamorous and sophisticated?

My moniker of choice changed often, and usually reflected my interests or experiences at the time. Some of my choices were:

Alexandra Sommerton (conceived in my soap opera phase)

Chantal Chaurent (completely made up, but it sounded convincingly French to me, and at the time, I was a hardcore francophile)

Lauren Elizabeth (I thought two first names was the ultimate in Sophistication)

Jamie Majors (taken from my profound love of the Bionic Man and Woman)

Sylvia Vincent (created during my deep and melancholoy phase as a tribute to Sylvia Plath and Edna St. Vincent Millay)

There were more, I'm sure, but those are the ones that I loved the most. At one time, I had actually planned to name my girl child Lauren Elizabeth. SIGH.

When I got engaged to Husband, people actually asked me if I was going to keep my maiden name, or perhaps hyphenate. You would have to know the names to appreciate the hilarity of that question. I was most certainly not keeping or hyphenating my name. I had, after all, been waiting my whole life to get rid of it. I had had my fill of nutsack jokes.

My boys have good names. And my husband, unlike his cavalcade of cousins, has a pretty normal name as well. Nobody would guess that he was Southern just from his name. I know that kids will always find something for which to pick on one another, but at least I can remove that temptation from the equation of childhood humiliation.

So, anyway....thanks to those who participated. The winner, chosen at random from those who guessed correctly, is Jaime. Please email me with your information and I'll get your book in the mail.