#507 theoldmortuary ponders

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

Here is another Jetpack ( My blogging platform) suggestion, that did actually spark a ponder. My middle name is Anne. To the best of my knowledge it has no special significance. However coupled with a first name of Juliet it creates a spelling minefield, perhaps less so in the digital age, but certainly as child and young adult I would say that at least 75% of the time I would have to correct peoples spelling of my names. Constantly removing an additional T and E from my first name and donating the E back to my middle name. Juliette Ann felt as alien as being called Geoffrey or indeed Jeffery.

A proper first world problem that I have only ever discussed with my friend Marianne ( Marion) until this week when I met a fellow artist called Norah (Nora) who expressed the problem in a different way to me. Marianne and I would agree that the wrong spelling feels uncomfortable, itchy even, just not right. Marianne has lived her life with a curious sentence. ” Marianne with any” meaning with N and E.

Norah went further , she said without her H she felt lopsided, and again the word, uncomfortable. Without her H, she said she cannot function effectively.

What’s in a name?

If I were an actor or musician I would likely have to have a stage name and that would be just fine, I could be comfortable with that. A completely different personna who did glamorous things in exotic places. While Juliet Anne returned home to do the prosaic things of Normal Life. I do not have an imagined stage name to hand.

Had I been a boy I was to have been named Noel after a much loved uncle who killed himself during my mothers pregnancy. Thank goodness that didn’t happen. If I had been a boy I would like to have been called Barzilian after my paternal great grandfather, with a middle name of  Zebediah. I would be known as Zeb. Heaping bad name spelling on my male self by the bucket load. The idea of introducing myself as Zeb is actually quite thrilling. Oh to actually be part of the boy gang with all the privilege that brings.

Names are prescient this week. We welcomed our third granddaughter into our tiny family on Wednesday.

Cecily Bea is one of  a trio of small girls who make up our next generation. Surely some spelling confusions there, especially as Bea is pronounced Be-ah.

She already has a small confusion she was born quickly on Tuesday evening, no time for any worries or concerns, but she was actually born in the early morning of Thursday in Hong Kong. The time difference making a date difference. Whenever, wherever and whoever she is most welcome.