What's in a name?

by Sacbarb

Zona and I were talking about names the other day and I told her I didn't like my maiden name. I never looked forward to the first day of school, because every teacher would screw it up. It was a long (12 letters) Italian name and all they had to do was sound it out, but it seemed to intimidate anyone who read it for the first time. So when the teacher started to take roll on the first day of school, I would answer "HERE" as soon as she said "Barbara," to save me (and the teacher) the embarrassment.

When I was around 10, I asked my parents if we could change our name to the English translation and my Father had a fit. I got the lecture of how I should be proud of our name, blah, ,blah, blah. I was 10 for heaven sake, I just wanted a 'normal' last name. My mother blamed my attitude on our moving to Los Angeles when I was 4, because if I grew up in New York, where I was born and had tons of Italian relatives, I would think our name was normal.

When I started dating, I would only date boys with easy last names. I dated John Mason, Edward Jones, Bill Raleigh (I thought he said Reilly or I may have declined) Joe Duncan, and others whose names escape me, but I know they were easy to pronounce. I didn't want to take the chance of falling in love with some hard to pronounce last name guy and have my kids go through what I went through. I eventually married -you guessed it- a man with an easy (even common) last name.

Of course, now when I look back on it, I feel badly that I didn't appreciate my heritage when I was young. I think my Mother was right, that if I grew up with all my cousins, I wouldn't have given it another thought. But then I also wouldn't have met my Husband and had 33 1/2 years with him and we wouldn't have had our three wonderful sons. So there IS a reason for everything, even my attitude.

What did you think of your name when you were a child? Or did you even give it a thought or just take it for granted?