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idlerat!!
This popped into my head on the way home the other day...does anybody else know what name they would have been called if they were the opposite sex, and if you do,
Do you think about it?
I asked my roommate--she would have been called Eric. She also knew her alternate girl name, Yvonne. Apparently she and her sisters were all potential Eric/Yvonnes, but all were girls and none looked like an Yvonne (also Mom couldn't decide on the correct pronunciation). Personally, I think one of her sisters could have been an Yvonne, on her and the other one it would be purely quirky.
But it was more interesting looking at her and imagining her alternate boy self, Eric. (Her father was also partial to Thor, and I've got to say she dodged a bullet there. Ethnic heritage aside...whoa. That's a lot to live up to.) The weird thing is, I can kind of see it--the Eric, that is, not the Thor. Now I can look at her and somehow imagine this boy version called Eric.
The one alternate girl name my mother once mentioned for me was Miranda, Mandy (not Randy) for short. I can't really see it--my roommate said (and I agree) she could see more as Amanda than Miranda. I was friends with a Miranda growing up. We called her neither Mandy nor Randy, but Mirn (sometimes Mirnie). So when I think of my name being Miranda, it's more like an odd thing, rather than a name I could have had.
If I was a boy I would have been Mark. I asked my mother this probably when I was a kid and it always stayed in my head. Mark somehow holds out all these tantalizing possibilities, you know? Maybe I still would have been friends with my roommate and we'd have been Eric and Mark. (Although maybe not, as we first met in college and Mark and Eric wouldn't have gone to Smith...)
Mark. It's not a name that really means anything to me beyond this. I had one in my class growing up about which I have no strong feelings. He played the saxophone. On the one hand the idea that this would have been my name had the chromosomes worked out just a little bit differently is a big deal. On the other hand...it's not. It's not my name, it's got no connection to me. But it does!
Anybody else ever ask your parents this question? I knowadela711 had a name change soon after she was born. My father still calls my cousin Matthew because "he was supposed to be called that" even though the man's been Jeffrey for over 30 years. At the same time, I know why he does it. Because while he looks like a Jeff he could be a Matthew, you know? It does fit him. So as much as I want to just laugh at my father for doing this, there's this ghostly Matthew in my head too--and I wasn't even around when his name was being planned. I heard it once and thought, yes, that works.
So Brother Magpie would have been Mark. What would he have been like? Any one else ever think about this? Especially slashers? Is it more of a girl thing to ask this question and wonder about it, or do guys tend to know about this too?
idlerat!!This popped into my head on the way home the other day...does anybody else know what name they would have been called if they were the opposite sex, and if you do,
Do you think about it?
I asked my roommate--she would have been called Eric. She also knew her alternate girl name, Yvonne. Apparently she and her sisters were all potential Eric/Yvonnes, but all were girls and none looked like an Yvonne (also Mom couldn't decide on the correct pronunciation). Personally, I think one of her sisters could have been an Yvonne, on her and the other one it would be purely quirky.
But it was more interesting looking at her and imagining her alternate boy self, Eric. (Her father was also partial to Thor, and I've got to say she dodged a bullet there. Ethnic heritage aside...whoa. That's a lot to live up to.) The weird thing is, I can kind of see it--the Eric, that is, not the Thor. Now I can look at her and somehow imagine this boy version called Eric.
The one alternate girl name my mother once mentioned for me was Miranda, Mandy (not Randy) for short. I can't really see it--my roommate said (and I agree) she could see more as Amanda than Miranda. I was friends with a Miranda growing up. We called her neither Mandy nor Randy, but Mirn (sometimes Mirnie). So when I think of my name being Miranda, it's more like an odd thing, rather than a name I could have had.
If I was a boy I would have been Mark. I asked my mother this probably when I was a kid and it always stayed in my head. Mark somehow holds out all these tantalizing possibilities, you know? Maybe I still would have been friends with my roommate and we'd have been Eric and Mark. (Although maybe not, as we first met in college and Mark and Eric wouldn't have gone to Smith...)
Mark. It's not a name that really means anything to me beyond this. I had one in my class growing up about which I have no strong feelings. He played the saxophone. On the one hand the idea that this would have been my name had the chromosomes worked out just a little bit differently is a big deal. On the other hand...it's not. It's not my name, it's got no connection to me. But it does!
Anybody else ever ask your parents this question? I know
adela711 had a name change soon after she was born. My father still calls my cousin Matthew because "he was supposed to be called that" even though the man's been Jeffrey for over 30 years. At the same time, I know why he does it. Because while he looks like a Jeff he could be a Matthew, you know? It does fit him. So as much as I want to just laugh at my father for doing this, there's this ghostly Matthew in my head too--and I wasn't even around when his name was being planned. I heard it once and thought, yes, that works.So Brother Magpie would have been Mark. What would he have been like? Any one else ever think about this? Especially slashers? Is it more of a girl thing to ask this question and wonder about it, or do guys tend to know about this too?
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Re: 'i don't like ross.' 'wow, what a weird way to kick me when i'm down'
Haha. The ex-wife. 'Raaaaaaahhwssss.' I didn't mind them so much, but I thought it was kind of harsh how they all ripped on him for that, when no-one was ever allowed to mock the girls for too long.
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know what you mean about those family names where you end up with so many different people
I think it's common in a number of ethnicities, because one half of my family is Italian-American, hte other is Irish-American, and on both sides there are one or two names that dominate.
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Re: 'i don't like ross.' 'wow, what a weird way to kick me when i'm down'
And yeah with Phoebe it's like, no, sorry but having a parent die actually doesn't give you dibs on making children cry and stealing other peoples' pets. Why would it?
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I think it's kind of sad that most parents these days seem to know the sex of a baby ahead of time, so they probably don't pick out alternate names like that. Why deprive a whole generation of this type of speculation?
My mother also mentioned that at one point she considered naming me Adelheid so that she could call me Heidi for short. (My mother's very German, as you might guess!) I don't think she considered it for very long, though, and I feel extremely lucky on that count! I really, really don't feel like a "Heidi." She also thought about Julianne, but couldn't come up with a middle name to go with it. I wouldn't have minded that one. It's not too far from the name I did end up with.
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That's a good point! I don't think I would want to know the sex in advance. It seems kind of like bad luck to me to assume the baby's a done deal before you have it.
I like Julianne. I admit I like Adelheid too, just because it's different, though I don't know if I'd have wanted to be saddled with it.
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I could be a Jenny, I suppose. It was way too popular as a name for older kids when I was born but by the time I was in elementary school I only had like one girl named Jenny in my class.
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My "alternate" girl name was Emily Jane--which is funny, because I roomed with two different girls named Emily in college. That was also the girl name for my older brother, and it was the plan until about T-minus-two-months when my dad suddenly decided that he was tired of the name. So some brainstorming ensued and my mom sort of absently mentioned that she'd always thought her grandmother's name was pretty. My great-grandmother died when my mom was about fifteen, so my dad had never met her or even heard what her name was, and my mom had thought vaguely that it might sound too old-fashioned. But my dad loved it, and so I became Marie Elizabeth. (According to the Beyond Jennifer and Jason people, it is too old-fashioned, but I'm much more of a Marie than the hipper alternative Mariel). I think we both could have pulled off Emily, but then I know so many Emilys it doesn't hold much stereotypical weight to me.
(In general, I love names, and read baby name books for fun--there's a great one that has the names organized by literary reference, which is occasionally quite useful. I also took the naming of things--dolls and stuffed animals--very, very seriously, albeit with some bizarre results. (Ah, LeeAnn Holly Pepper, my 1984 Cabbage Patch doll. I also was given one of those dolls from a series that's supposed to "match" you--so mine had red hair and green eyes"--when I was about four and being on a literal bent called the doll Little Marie. My mom is big into dolls and bought me the historical American Girl dolls almost as they were coming out, even though by doll five (Addy) I was past playing with them--my mother still takes them out to dress up for Halloween, and change seasonally, though. Anyway, when I was in high school they released a "contemporary" doll where you could specify hair and eye color and skin tone and my mother just had to get me one--complete with glasses to match my pre-LASIK self--and no one can ever refer to her as anything but Teen Marie. I'm not sure this is particularly relevent, but naming things was definitely a big power thing for me that translated directly into writing via character names.)
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I always see a hot fisherman in my head when I think of 'Luka'.
Oh, and Sistermagpie, I love that the name reminds you of the moon! :)) There aren't many male names that do that, I don't think. It bizarrely reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix's first name, which was 'Leaf' (I hope this is true because I find it amazing!).
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