What’s in a Name? How about 17 letters?
I grew up with a surname that was the butt of many jokes. In fact, it was so bad that it might as well have been Butt. I yearned for a “normal” name and resented the Jennifer Browns and Tammy Smiths of the world. My friends would fantasize about their wedding day, yet all I wanted was a handle that didn’t elicit giggles.
In a classic case of “careful what you wish for,” I married a Serbian man and went from a two-syllable last name to one with six syllables that was impossible to pronounce on the first dozen tries. At the time, I considered it a lateral move.
We moved to a new city shortly after we were married and I vowed to never reveal my former name. Co-workers were driven crazy with guesses (my favourite: “Is it Lori Swallows?”) but I was a vault, refusing to give up my past identity.
Finally, someone called my previous employer, pretending to be an old high school friend looking to get in touch with me, and the receptionist gave up my maiden name. The hilarity of my surname was apparently worth all of the trouble he went through to dig it up.
When the Serb and I had kids we chose simple first names and ditched middle names altogether. In my husband’s culture middle names aren’t usually done, so he didn’t care if our kids went without. I wanted to forego the extra name for more pragmatic reasons: a lifetime of filling out forms and running out of spaces for all of the letters. I already suspect they’ll have carpal tunnel by high school.
I’m thankful for my middle name because it’s also my pen name. ‘Lori Dyan’ is memorable but not generic, sounds interesting without being ridiculous, and is easy to pronounce.
If nothing else, it’s better than the alternatives, especially Lori Swallows.
Click here to read more from Lori Dyan.
Now I’m dying of curiosity to know what the horrible last name is! My husband’s last name is easily made fun of, and it was so very hard to know what to do for the children’s last name. He was comfortable with using my last name, but, rather to my surprise, I had reservations about not having his name as at least part of the picture! We ended up hyphenating, and just about every day, I wonder if it was an unwieldy mistake. Seriously, every day. I guess if we’d given them his name, they might also have looked forward to marrying out of it…
My name is not particularly fetching. Plus, I have the initials of Alcoholics Anonymous, American Airlines, medium size batteries. It is terribly cacophonous and I have sworn that if I become famous I will spice it up with a Von or Del or a hyphenated Disney, Trump, Gates or the like. I wish my parents had had the sense you and the Serb had when naming your kids.
Lori Swallows might do wonders for your blog traffic.
I have a relative whose first name is Oralee who married a man with the last name Cox.
Oralee Cox is just not a good name. Not in any way. (Perhaps worse than Lori Swallows..and it was her ACTUAL name…so yes. worse.)
Her daughter hated Cox, too; with good reason – she always said it was because the name was so short (yeah right).
So then she married a man with the last name Moerschbaecher (because someone has to embrace silent e’s. and h’s. and c’s.).
But even that has only a paltry 14 letters.
17? I can’t even imagine.
Almost any last name can be used to ridicule. Kids are experts in the art. My last name was Moore. Innocuous, right? Problem is, you can insert any and all manner of verbs as a middle name. Erin Needs Moore, said with the right inflection, was very embarrassing to my 13-year-old self.
I met some ladies last week and confessed my maiden name. They are still laughing hysterically. BUT, it’s not as bad as a schoolmate of my friend, whose name was Shakuntalla Behairysang. No Joke.