Published: July 13, 2008 12:08 am            

What’s in a name?

I’ve been called by many names in my life, some of them less than flattering. But we won’t talk about that. I’ll leave those up to your imagination.

My real name is Kathryn. Whenever somebody calls me and asks for “Kathryn,” I know they’re either a medical person or are going to try to sell me something.

I was named after my grandmothers. Kathryn, my paternal grandmother, changed the spelling of her first name when she was in high school from “Katherine” to the more sophisticated “Kathryn.”

This was never changed on her birth certificate, so it turns out that my name was based on an alias, not on her real name. I can’t complain, though I do have to constantly spell it for people.

My middle name is Wynn. This was my maternal grandmother’s middle name. I’m not sure where her name came from, but I’m guessing it was the name of some author who had a book out in the 1890s, when my grandmother was born.

You see, my great-grandmother, who was quite a character, gave her five children middle names based on whatever book she happened to be reading when they were born. I had a great-aunt with the middle name “Evangeline.” My youngest great-aunt was saddled with the middle name “Zaney” because my great-grandmother was reading a Zane Grey novel when she was born.

My younger daughter, Lyra, has two middle names. Her birth mother, her daddy, Jeff, and I agreed that we would all approve her names. Jeff later said this was like negotiating nuclear disarmament.

Her birth mother kept coming up with names like “Zephyr.” I pointed out that the child might want to be able to spell her name before she was in junior high. Finally, in desperation, after looking in every baby name book known to man, I thumbed through an astronomy book and found the constellation Lyra. Amazingly, we all liked the name.

When it came to the middle name, Jeff and I quickly settled on the name “Marie.” It was both my mother’s and his mother’s middle name. Lyra’s birth mother didn’t like it. She said “Lyra Marie” sounded too much like a hymn. She didn’t explain exactly what was wrong with that, but we’d agreed that we’d all approve of the baby’s names, so that was out.

Then I suggested my middle name and “Marie.” Since the nurse was coming down the hall with the birth certificate to be filled out, we had to make a decision fast. So Lyra got both middle names.

This will probably always haunt Lyra in some way.

There’s never enough room on forms for all four of her names. She has two middle initials, and again, forms don’t have spaces for more than one. I hope she doesn’t hate us for this later. Meanwhile, I think “Lyra Wynn Marie” is kind of pretty.

So we all have many names we go by. I’ll bet you do, too. But, of all the names I’ve been called, I have to confess my favorite name is “Mommy.”

E-mail Kay W. Thompson at kaywt@suddenlink.net

        

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