After my last post, I decided to go with a little more light-hearted topic today. (Yes, I did take down my last post, by the way. Not because I'm ashamed of anything I said. I stand by every word, and I'd love to tell you my story in person sometime if you want to hear it. You just never know who your audience is on the Internet, and people can use anything you say against you.) So here's hoping that you'll get a little chuckle when you read this.
Only Southerners really understand double names.
If only I had a dollar for every time someone has made one of the following comments, I would never have to work another day in my life.
"So, is there a hyphen between the Mary and the Rachel? Or is it just a space?"
"Is Rachel your middle name?"
"Is it 'Mary Rachel Something Fenrick'? Sorta like two middle names?"
"Is 'Mary Rachel' your whole first name?"
All of those questions, in my opinion, are pretty fair. In fact, I'd rather you ask them than assume that my name does have a hyphen when it does not. Or give me a new middle name because, bless my heart, my parents forgot to give me one.
The questions below are my favorites. I can't even get mad at people when they innocently ask these questions because they have become so amusing to me.
"Are you Catholic?" (I'm not.)
"Why did your parents decide to go with both names?" (I don't know. Maybe you should ask them.)
"Do people ever just call you one or the other?"
And my personal favorite...
"Can I just call you one or the other?"
Um, no. You can't. If your name is Andrew, I don't call you And. If your name is Cody, I don't call you Cod. And if your name is Shawna, I don't call you Shawn. My name is Mary Rachel. You can't just call me Mary.
I used to resent having a double name. Especially in kindergarten, when everybody in else in the class was writing "Zach" or "Amy" on their papers and I was writing the excruciatingly long ten letters of Mary Rachel. Even in high school, I considered dropping the Mary and just going with Rachel because no one could ever get my name right, it seemed. Now, I appreciate my name. It's unique, and it makes me who I am. I can deal with people's questions about my name because the questions are comical. Sometimes I make a game of guessing which ones people are going to ask when they first meet me. I think some day, I'll even give my daughter a double name. She'll probably hate me for awhile because of it, but I'm okay with that.
