TreeHouseView

Today’s writing prompt, “What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?” intrigues me, largely because my first name has given me a lifetime of grief and my middle name is much more palatable. It actually does have some significance, as does my maiden name.

Let me preface this whole thing by saying that both my first name and last name are not of the Jenny Smith variety, and are mispronouned more so than not. I’m used to it, yet it still gives me moments of frustration, fascination, and downright fucking fury.

The frustration and fury come from the constant correction that is necessary when you have an unusual name. Most people are immediately apologetic and fairly gracious about it when they are corrected. A select few, like the medical assistant I had the displeasure of running into this week at an appointment who took it upon herself to be a complete snit of a snot after I corrected her mispronunciation of my first name, are not. She is definitely on my list to be turned into a character for one of my books, and she probably won’t survive the first couple chapters.

And then there are the ones who continue to mispronouce your name after hearing you pronounce it for them. These are the ones that alternately infuriate me and fascinate me. Becaues WHAT IS THAT? Is that obstinance? Genuine misunderstanding? Actual stupidity? Maybe a for-real hearing deficit? It’s pretty damn funny how many reasons can run through your mind as you’re staring at someoe in that moment, in the middle of already laughing it off and telling yourself it doesn’t matter.

Because it does matter. It’s your name. It’s your identity, and it carries more weight than maybe a lot of people realize. Especially those with common names, and those who waltz through life never having to worry about when their name is going to be called off of a list and how it’s going to be butchered, and their introverted little self is going to have to call attention to themselves AGAIN.

Have I lost anyone yet? Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

My middle name is Noel, and seeing as I was born on Christmas Eve, the significance is pretty clear. My mom used to tell me that the nurses in the hospital (it was a Catholic hospital…we weren’t Catholic, but Lutheran, which I’ve heard called Catholic Lite) thought my first name should be Mary due to the fact that I was born on the eve of what Christianity celebrates as the birth of Jesus.

So I was blessed with the lovely French word for Christmas as a middle name and absolutely love it. I took four or five years of French through high school and college (it’s been so long I really don’t remember!) and while my family roots are quite Scandinavian, an exotic French-adjacent middle name made me feel almost a littlte bit…avant garde?

And I say French-adjacent because I don’t even know if my mom actually knew the French connection. We really had that brief of an interaction about the whole thing. But childhood memories are tricky like that. It’s possible she was the one who told me the name is French, and it’s also entirely feasible that she told me to “look it up”, which was her answer to most of my questions as I was growing up.

Maybe I should just go ahead and rename this blog Mommy Issues.

Regardless of my need for therapy, I do like my middle name. Now, my first name is another story and I’ll reserve that for a day when I have hours and hours to wax on about all of the feelings I have about that, and maybe after I’ve worked through some of those Mommy issues with my therapist.