All in a Name

You may or may not know, but my (married) last name is extremely annoying. It is not particularly difficult to pronounce or spell, but people always want to misspell it by adding 1 extra "r" than it has. There is a "de" in the middle of it, and people invariably change it to "der", even when I have just finished spelling it out to them. Recently on the phone it took me three times spelling it out before the person removed the "r" that they had inserted the first time and got it right. Bah.

Recently my sister-in-law was visiting and we were talking about names. She got rid of my current last name and married someone with one of the most easy last names, something similar to "Green". I am jealous and she totally started laughing at me that I am now stuck with this last name.

So the Urban Shaman and I started talking about changing our last name to something that was easier to spell and that we liked better. Urban Shaman is totally done with the 3rd syllable in the name. However, we decided that we really want to keep the first letter as we like it.

Later that night we brought it up with my parents, who totally thought it was a great idea, and best to do it before Il Tonino starts to memorize and learn to write it. So we started discussing names, and then started getting all silly with it. My dad got out the dictionary and started throwing out words that start with that letter. With the help of the good wine we had been drinking, I just about died laughing. My mom was much more practical by getting the phone book and looking at the names in there.

We like 2 names, but they don't feel right. So I think we'll keep thinking about it and see if we can find another name we like better. My sister has always been very good with names (she was the one who could easily name each and every Barbie doll while I stumbled to find a name for even one of them) so I am going to ask her to help out.

So this is kind of exciting... especially when it is something you're going to have for your whole life. Except the actual paperwork involved with changing the name won't be so exciting (passports! driver's licenses! social security! mailing lists! credit cards! bank accounts! marriage certificate! birth certificates! email addresses!)

Still, might be worth not having to spell our name and get the "r" removed for the 2,387th time...