But it's not so amusing any more living in south-west Sydney when
a. the Anglos do pretty much the same thing and
b. most locals aren't Anglo and the variety (and spelling) of given names is myriad or legion even. So no-one would ever worry or think twice about someone called Clare or Single.
But back in the comfortable but embarrassing Anglo world, my wife, Penny, has suffered long trying to make people understand how her name is properly spelled and pronounced. A (Greek) classic though it may be. Amazing how many seemingly intelligent, educated people think it rhymes with antelope.
Now Stephen, even that eminently sensible name has its problems ...
Judy Redman wrote:
You definitely don't have to have a difficult name for people to have difficulty with it. One of the reasons I chose to take my husband's family name when we got married because I was so sick of saying "My name is Judy Single ... that's S I N G L E"That, and the small range of very, very boring and stupid comments about it that passed for humour in many circles. Judy -- "Politics is the work we do to keep the world safe for our spirituality" - Judith Plaskow Rev Judy Redman Uniting Church Chaplain University of New England Armidale 2351 ph: +61 2 6773 3739 fax: +61 2 6773 3749 web: http://www.une.edu.au/campus/chaplaincy/uniting/ action for peace: http://www.une.edu.au/campus/chaplaincy/uniting/links/peace.html email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Clare Pascoe Henderson Sent: Tuesday, 8 June 2004 9:45 AM To: insights Subject: Re: What\'s in a name? Peter R. Ellis & family wrote:My wife, who teached preschool aged children in governmentpreschools, finds seemingly endless variations on names. I wonder whether it has anything to do with a desire on the part of parents to give their children a distinctive identity. I also wonder whether it instead impales the young person on a pike of explaining their whole life that there name is pronounced and spelled this way rather than what many prople would assume might be that way... and whether the parent would do such a thing if they had such a name themselves. Speaking as someone who has one of those names ("without the i, please"), you get used to it :-) And named by a John (no difficulties there) and an Annabelle ("double L, E, please") I don't think it was in any way governed by a desire for distinctive identity or took into consideration my mother's lifelong battle to have her name spelt correctly (both my parents have middle names that are distinctly unusual, and both hid their middle names for most of their growing up years as a result). It was simply a name they liked, and the spelling they preferred. And my daughter's name is Shiara, not in a desire for a distinctive identity but because it's a derivation of my own name (a mispronunciation of the Italian form) that I heard as a teenager, and liked enough to want to use it. And I *did* consider the unusualness of it, but decided that seeing it written down would make the pronunciation obvious, and hearing it said would make the spelling obvious. I was wrong on both counts. Incidentally, I was well aware ahead of time, from the fact that my own name's spelling is the least common version, that there would be a downside to the distinctiveness of Shiara's name insofar as finding items with her name printed on them (they don't exist!). But we found a solution to that by making use of the times when a personally ordered option is available. Clare *************************************************** Clare Pascoe Henderson http://www.clergyabuseaustralia.org Clergy Sexual Abuse in Australia Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] *************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
