What Is In A Name?

It is amazing that you can work in a building and never see or talk to the people you work with every single day. I teach at a school where our enrollment is roughly 600 students. We have 3-4 teachers at every grade level. There are months that go by and I don't see people on the other end of the building because our schedules aren't conducive to it.

We have early releases on a monthly basis to do staff development, talk about curriculum, work at grade levels, or work in your classrooms. So today we have one of those days...early release. We receive an email this morning to tell us who we are to sit with. No reason, just your partner. I was paired up with as we call it our Arctic Tundra buddy. It seems this person and I always have bus duty during the Arctic blasts around here. I, however don't really know her, only talk to her when we have bus duty, or if I happen to run into her in the copy room. She is very nice, but again the way our schedules are...it is impossible or maybe improbable.

So, today during the meeting our principal gives us the low down on the school board meetings, seriously blah blah blah. Get to why we are here with the partners. Yeah...we finally find out. He says you get 2 minutes to talk to this person and find out why they were named their name.

GO! That was fun. We both found out we really don't know why we have our names. She told me she doesn't like her birth name, but the nicknamed derived from it. I don't have a shortened name it is just Tammy. No Tamara. I use to hate that when I was younger....people would always ask is that your real name! No people just TAMMY.

I use to ponder on that name and wonder myself why Tammy? Why? It is such a goofy name. Tammy Slammy Whammy...the rhymes use to drive me nuts. I now don't mind my name because it is what it is.

Do you know why you were named? Is there a story behind it? Most people who shared today had my response Don't know. Some people were named after a relative, others were after famous people, names because you were born near a Christmas holiday. My favorite was I was named after a famous soapstar from the 70s. Not his real name, his character name. How funny. Then I started thinking about my own kids...why did I name them that.

Alyssa is named after my hubby's mom. It is a derivative of her name. Brandon is just Brandon, no reasons why. Emma was suppose to be Brooke, but on the way to the hospital it just came to me in a vision. EMMA! Alyssa was even telling everyone it was Brooke... how funny is that. I am sure others have such similar stories. So what is your story?