The other day, I was sourcing DIYs on youtube about cork boards and stumbled across a young girl named Elsie, my mother's name, and not a common one for anyone under 60. Definitely not beyond the 1940s when she was born. A name that she hated with a fiery passion, particularly since there was a Borden's mascot named Elsie the Cow, who had a statue in nearby Harvard, which my mother was teased endlessly about as a chubby child. Like her body, my mother hated her name her entire life, which equally seemed kind of sad to me.
I have been a bit neutral to my name. One one hand, I feel like its a name perfect for Texas cheerleaders who peak in high school and whose mothers murder their cheer camp rivals. There were variations on Kristy--Christys and Christinas and Kristine's aplenty. Maybe one similarly spelled variation in high school I only knew of. My freshman roommate in NC, which led to a lot of phone confusion. My sister was a more staid Rebecca, who had gone by Becky when younger but the longer version as an adult.
My grandmothers were an Eileen and a Carol. I always said if I had children by some accident or change of heart I would name a daughter Chloe, after my great grandmother, a tiny stylish woman who lived in a tiny, tidy house with a pink bathroom and cat eyeglasses with homemade chocolate chip in a Folgers can. She outlived both my grandmothers and lasted well into her 80sThe others were lost early to illness and accidents, but she was definitely the most stereotypically grandmotherly of all of them. We would visit her on weekends, mostly sitting on the breezeway between the house and the garage. Every year, gather for Thanksgiving in her knotty-pine lined basement with strange secret compartments under the stairs.
I've often longed for a more adultish or glamorous name. When a cousin and I were younger, we'd choose names and pretend to be entirely different people under them. They were either actresses or characters from movies. We'd plan entire mansions and lives and movie-star husbands in our lavish imaginary lives with better, more interesting names.
In the end, I think I just accepted Kristy because I had to, having known nothing else. Even still, seeing something I like seeing on a byline or a book cover, but still a strange disconnect. between how you see yourself and how others interpret you. The expectations our names elicit--whether it's heritage, class, age (ie, there are not many Kristys entering the world today, though Christina is still kind of popular.) I laugh watchng Stranger Things every time when someone calls Eleven Joan, because it's so dated and plain. But then that is the point. All the female names in the series so very eighties (and actually I would argue even out of date for teens then...Nancy, Barb, Maxine. )The only ones that would have been really popular in that age bracket would have been Erica and maybe Robin (though Robin had a renaissance in 80's births.) I was in school with a lot of Lisa, Michelles and Jennifers.
