Name and Taint

The favorite part of the newspaper which i simply have to visit each time i read it is the obituary. No no... don't take it a sick way, not that i enjoy doing headcounts of dead people, but more to inform myself of someone i may know who had passed on without my knowledge. But one reason i never fail to stop at the obituary page is also because i love checking out names of people... Weird i know... who ever said i was anything less than neurotic?

Anyways.... (rolls eyes) back to names. I've been obssesed about names since i was a child. I remember all my plush toys by names. And since i didn't have barbie dolls, i used to name my green army soldiers as well as put my lego pieces together in the shape of a boy or girl and name them. I remember wishing my name was different, for a very good reason! See, my full name is Charlene Fay Murray, some or my teachers pronounced my name as "Cha-le-ne" for 2 full years. Some called me "charlie" which was associated to Charlie Chaplin, my nickname for 4 full years in primary school. And then, we learnt bout malay idioms! Sigh... There was a idiom to name a talkative person "mulut murai" in malay, and since i was talkative and my surname is Murray, you see the connection don't you. And then came secondary school, where i returned to schoold being fat and almost obese. Sigh... I was a fat fat kid. And the secondary school i went to was predominantly attended by chinese students. So see.... MY middle name is Fay, and in mandarin, Fay simply means FAT! So teachers and students started calling me fattie, fay fay, char kueh tiaw ( cz its greasy therefore equivalent to fats therefore equivalent to fay my middle name).

So see, can u understand now why on earth i wanted to just have a normal average name like "laura" or "melissa" or even "salimah". At least people wouldn't have teased me.

But through the years, i have learnt to appreciate my name. It's unique, it's a part of my grandmother's name and i think it suits me well, tho some people like Kathy, still contests that a name like "betty" would suit me better.

Some names are just wrong. Like Kathy reckons that the name "bertha" is horrid because one cannot say the name without making a "yucky" face. it's like saying the word puke. Same way we agreed that we would not name our kid "natasha" because we know too many "B****" who are named Natasha. I personally think Beatrice is a name of a mean person. And most people who are named "prudence" are often not prudent at all. Gary always sounds gay. And "jesus" is just wrong to be used on a human. "einstein" wll make your kid a laughing joke in school. And names like "Vaginia, Zakaria, Mani, Rahimah, Ah-Kau, Ah-choo, Ah-Siow, Ah-lan, Ah-ciao" are just WRONG....

Names are a very big aspect of one's life... when u have the chance to choose one....choose wisely... :)