so, jackie's latest post on "what's in a name?" listed a couple of rules about name picking for people who are expecting. her first rule is:

"don't pick a name that's hard to spell or pronounce. your kid will have to correct people for the rest of his or her life."

(first kudos for the "his or her." i hate when people are lazy and use "his" for all things neutral.)

so, anyway, i can kind of relate to this rule because my name is melyssa and until two months ago my last name really got muddled in pronunciation over the phone. so, i was constantly having to spell my entire name for people. my permanent script became "first name - melyssa - m-e-l-Y-s-s-a, last name, etc."

this can be annoying, but i got used to it. and i kind of like being different. i like providing my driver's license when i write a check (yes, i'm one of the last people on earth still writing checks) and getting the response, "oh that's a neat spelling of your name."

i once worked with a melissa who admitted to me that she didn't want our boss to hire me because we had the same name and my name was spelled "way cooler." yeah. way mature. what's more sad is she was four years older than me.


my best friend's name is melissa. we have no problems with this. it's usually pretty easy for people to tell us apart. and we're good listeners so when someone has a question it's pretty easy to figure out who's asking who what, just by the nature of the question. however, when first introduced people do look at us funny like we're sharing some inside joke.

anyway, i do understand jackie's no. 1 rule, but some oddballs like me, like being unique!


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