a post on kjersten’s blog brought back memories of my experience with having a unique name.

i always wished i had a normal name. my full name, cadence, seemed to be too hard for anyone to pronounce (although it is a well-known musical term), and my nickname of cady wasn’t any better. i was registered in high school and college under my full name, and when new teachers reached my name during roll call there usually was silence as they mentally tried to figure it out.

“that’s me,” i would say, knowing they were at my name. “i’m here.”

or sometimes they’d try to say my name.

“ca-dense?” they’d say. “did i say that right?”

nope.

other times, like trips to the doctor’s office, i’d write “cady.”

“caddy?” they’d say.

“kay-de,” i’d reply.

it was exasperating, but the worst blunder was when i spelled my name for people or showed them my driver’s license they’d write “candace.” yes. that’s right. i can’t spell my own name. thanks for correcting me. or they’d spell it candance. i think that one’s my favorite. *that* i’ve never heard as a name. surely they would have figured it out.

i won’t even begin on the mistakes to my last name. 🙂 it makes it rough having two names that apparantly are impossible to say correctly. maybe if they *listened* to me they’d get it right.

despite all this, i’ve decided to give our children unique names. i suppose i should say *we* decided, because joe is with me on this. i don’t want them to have the same name as several other children in their classes. when my sister was born she was named lisa because there were no other lisas in the area. that year, every girl born in that town was named lisa.

i don’t want that to happen to our children. uniqueness is good. at least it’ll give them something to talk about.