I'm the "lucky" one. My name is Marcia, said MAR-cee-uh, not Marsha, Marica, Marcie, or Marissa. I don't try to fix people's pronunciation. When somone says my name correctly, it's an endearment, a secret handshake. When people find out inadvertently that they've been saying it incorrectly, I tell them that it's okay, I'm the lucky one, they should hear my sister's name.

My older brother got a run-of-the-mill name, but 13 months after his birth, my older sister was born. As the story goes, my aunt had found she could not have children and was dying to name one. So she was allowed to name my sister. She chose L'Jon, said luh-ZHON. No middle name, just L'Jon. It was supposed to mean "morning star" in Japanese or something, though I doubt it.

My sister recieved draft notices before women were even really welcomed into the military. She got called Little John, El-John, and who knows what all. She spells her name...a LOT. I think she now looks on her unusual name as I do mine--a part of herself that is uniquely hers. Neither of us run into others with our names, nor are we in any doubt who is being spoken to when someone calls our names. It's pretty cool.

My kids? My husband's name is slightly unusual though it's only four letters long. When spoken rather than read, it's hard for people to understand, so he gets called everything under the sun that's even close to his name. He ends up having to spell it often, too. So when our kids were born, we searched for uncommon but normal names. We didn't want them to be the fourth Ann or sixth Bob in their classes, but we didn't want them to have to spell everything about their names, either. We settled on old, classic names that meant something to our families. Pronounceable, simple, and...we hope...serviceable, whatever career they pursue.

Oh, and that aunt who gave my sister her "interesting" name? She soon had three children of her own, blandly named Helen, Mark, and Paul. She must have gotten it out of her system with my sister.

And it could have been worse for both of us. As I tell my children when something strange or bad happens to us, at least we got a good story out of it!