what's in a name?

When I was in third grade, my teacher (who was one of my favorites), read us this book about a boy who didn't like his name - so he decided to give himself a new one. (If I remembered the title I would share it, but I'm coming up with a blank. Anyone know the book I'm talking about?)

The moral of the story was basically that you should like who you are (even your name) as you are. But being the stubborn child that I was - I felt a secret kinship with this boy from the book.

I didn't like my name.

I wanted to change it.

Later that week, we got to choose a name to go by for the whole day - and I think that was to show how confusing it was to have someone calling you "Bernard" when you're actually a "Jake."But, I missed the day that we got to choose a new name to go by. My older sister was getting married.*

So not only did I unnecessarily pick out a new name for myself (Samantha) - I also sort of missed the point of the lesson.

The reason I picked Samantha was because of (and this is a direct quote from my 8 year old self):  "all of the nickname options!" Sam, Sammy...uh...Mantha? Basically there were two. But I thought that the possibilities were endless!
In reality, I had this really good friend named Samantha at the time and I kind of idolized her. She was SO good at soccer (something that I spent a lot of my time doing in third grade) and she was so pretty and cool without even trying! She was a tomboy and all of the boys would let her actually kick the ball at recess.
It wasn't the nickname options - it was because I thought there was something in the name Samantha that would make me all the things my friend was. When in actuality - I had some of those qualities already.

Now that I'm older, I'm learning to embrace being a Natalie. Sometimes people spell it differently and give me the secret french H (which I don't mind) or they call me Nicole, Nancy or Natalia. But at least there's that cool song by The Killers, right? And, as you can see above, I can always find personalized jewelry.

Do you ever wish you had a different name?


*While at the wedding I convinced my parents that is was a school assignment and they had to call me Samantha even though I wasn't at school. This lasted for about 10 minutes. My poor parents. I was kind of a tyrannical child.