A Rose By Any Other Name

My middle name is Palmyra (pal-my-ra). It's my Grandmother's name. It's an Italian version of Pamela. I liked having a different middle name, but I also had a difficult last name. Not to mention Gina can now be spelled 10 different ways. With a J, Geana, Geena, Jeena, seriously, did we need to screw up something as simple as Gina with 10 different spellings? No.

So, what this means is that I had to spell my first name and spell my last name and if asked, translate and spell my middle name. Growing up, I wanted a simple name. I wanted to be Kelly. Kelly was the prettiest of the Charlie's Angels. She was also the prettiest of the 90210 gals. With my out of control curly red hair and freckled face, I wanted to be Kelly and everything that name meant to me.

Picking a name for our children was difficult for David and I. He liked very traditional. I liked a little more contemporary which sometimes crossed into what David refers to as a "soap opera name". Like Blaze or Ashley. Before we even knew if Emily was a girl, we had her name picked out. I liked Emma or Ella. David suggested Emily. We had no clue that it was the most popular girls name for 10 years running. We both loved it. Emily.

We needed a middle name. We both like Emily Elizabeth (after my dear friend who died much too young), but that is the name of the little girl on Clifford the Big Red Dog. So, the search was on. Then, my Aunt Rosie (RoseMarie) suggested Rose. It fit perfectly and flowed nicely. Plus, she's one of my favorite people in the entire world. David and I both loved it.

We didn't do any funny spellings. I met someone whose daughter was also Emily, but she spelled it Emmaleigh. After spending my life spelling my name out to people, I felt sorry for the kid. And although it is a very common name, Emily has never had another girl in her class with the same name. She's never had to go by Emily G. for an entire year.

Emily has been getting into her middle name recently. She writes her full name on her homework assignments. And she made this bracelet this weekend:

She also said if she gets a cat she wants to name it Rosie. I think she likes her middle name. I'm happy about that. But, if she starts calling her dolls Ashley and Cricket, I'm going to have to insist she name one Kelly.