Name meme

[vilakins]

But before I get into it - Happy Birthday to jomacmouse and all the best for her new life away from the city. :-)

This meme is from zoefruitcake and trixieleitz who don't even know each other (amazing how these things get around).

1. Are you named after anyone? If so, explain.
   My real name, Nicola, was chosen for its beauty. My second name, Ruth, is after my grandmother and I like it too.
   My LJ name is of course after Vila Restal, an affectionate pet name for him. :-D
   
   
2. Have you chosen your children's names already? If so, is there any significance?
   The bad genes stop here, and anyway, I'm not one of nature's mothers. Besides there are more than enough people on this planet already.
   I have however used name I like for cats: Sigi, Petra, Claudia, Tessa. The only significance is that I think they're attractive.
   
   
3. If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name have been?
   Stephen, my mother told me. She was sure I'd be a boy she would name me Stephen, a name she liked at the time. I asked her why I wasn't Stephanie when I turned up, but she said she almost named me Priscilla. I'm glad I escaped. I knew a Priscilla at school and she got teased a lot.
   
   
4. If you could re-name yourself, what name would you choose and why?
   I like my first name. I'd probably change my surname to something easier for people to spell and say (they're always adding an extra vowel or stuffing up the consonants). But I don't mind that much.
   
   
5. Are there any common mispronunciations or mis-spellings of your name?
   I get Nicole a lot. I don't mind it as a name, but can't people read or listen? When I lived in Germany I gave up and became Nicole; it was just easier as it was a name they knew.
   What really riles me though is people who call me Nicky as soon as they meet me. I correct them firmly and if they persist, cutesify their name. Hah, that usually gets them. My preferred short form is Nico, the name my friends and family use. :-)

Comments

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the birthday wish :)

With regard to five, I have the opposite problem. Some people I've had e-mail contact with seem to think I was named Joanna...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

People see what's most familiar to them. I don't mind that much, but the unilateral abbreviations annoy me most of all. I'd never shorten someone's name unless they were introduced to me that way, or they asked me to.

So, what are you doing today? A nice meal out tonight perhaps? :-)

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

At the moment I'm being lazy. But my parents are taking me out tonight. Nowhere special, really, but that's all right :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Just going out is fun!

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

Very, very true, yes...

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Nicola is pretty, so is Nicole I think - the Parents obviously liked it, one of my sisters has it as a second name and one of my brothers has Nicholas as a second name.

I'd be interested as to how anyone could cutesify (good word, that) Sally :)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

oooh, ooh, I missed it! Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you....

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

Ta, Sally. But missing it would be next week sometime, not now :)

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

That might be because Sally is supposed to be short for Sarah. I think. You could be referred to as Sal. I can see you not thinking much of that idea. Don't think much of it myself...

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I'm the world expert on missing dates:) I actually stock up on belated birthday cards, 'ause I can always use them. Now if they'd just make belated Christmas cards...

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Actually, one of Sis's friends calls me Sal. From her, I'll accept it. Anyone else would get pointedly ignored (of course, how they'd differentiate that from accidentally ignored, I don't know...)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Sallykins? [evil grin] That's what I do to people whose names already end in 'y' and who call me Nicky.

Greg's family has a lot of Nicholases in it; it must be a popular Bulgarian name.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

That's evil... especially given your user name :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yep. More than a touch of irony there.

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

Eep, Priscilla always makes me think of pigs for some reason. It's a dreadful name. Nico is much better:). It's funny, there used to be a boy in my class who was called Nico, so I always assumed it was a boy's name rather than a girl's. Even if that's rarer than the usual "Niko" spelling and now stands out as an "obvious" prettier and thus girly version:P.

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

I correct them firmly and if they persist, cutesify their name.

Sometime I have the nerve to do that

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

If I'd been a boy, I would have been Craig, apparently. It's my father's middle name and my grandmother's maiden name, but, alas, it failed to work its way up through another generation, as my parents only had girls. :)

And I have exactly the opposite to the name-shortening problem. People often assume that Betty must be short for Elizabeth. It's not. My mother had very strong and rather idiosyncratic views on the appropriateness of giving a child one name and then calling them something else.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I've seen it for guys, and of course in Italy and other places, Nicola is a boy's name, which caused confusion in Rome when I met one and we both thought the other was saying our name when we were introducing ourselves. :-P

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

That depends on how well you do frosty disdain, doesn't it?

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

Heh. It's still not as weird as those Catholic boys named after female saints:)...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

My mother gave us all three-syllable names and promptly shortened them. :-( I never got her to stop calling me Nicky.

And you still could have got Craig as a middle name. I've heard of lots of women with male names or surnames as second or third ones. A friend is called Rosemary Horseley Haden and got hell once we found out.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, like Erich Maria Remarque.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I'm quite sure my mother would never have stood for that. :) Anyway, Craig doesn't seem to be one of those men's names that's started migrating to woman. It seems very unambiguously male to me.

I might still have preferred it to Ann, though. :)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I'm reliably informed that it shows very little difference from my amiable befuddlement... {sigh}