Friday Five ~ What’s in a name?

Bonnie (me) in 2008 with my youngest grandchild

Today's Friday Five is brought to us by 3dogmom, who wrote:

"Lately I’ve been a bit obsessed with tracking some genealogical mysteries in my family.  I’m reaching back through generations into the past, but I’m also moving from the past toward the present in an effort to locate cousins descended from the same ancestor.  Naming patterns prove to be useful clues in these endeavors, and in turn, lead me to today’s Friday Five theme."

1.  Is there a story behind your name?

Oh, yeah.  Let me tell you the story of my name(s).  My parents named me Bonnie for my mother's only sister and Lillian for my father's only sister.  The problem was that each of them used her name.  So my paternal grandmother tried lots of nicknames until one stuck:  Bitsy.  I weighed only five pounds when I was born, so I guess I was "itsy-bitsy" in that sense.  But I didn't like the name.  On the first day of school, my teacher called each child to her desk and asked, "And what are YOU called?"  Mother was sure I'd go into a long explanation of my names.  When it was my turn, however, the teacher asked her question, and I responded with one word.  "Bonnie," I said, and I've been Bonnie ever since.

2.   If you have children, how did you choose his/her/their name(s)?  If you don’t have children, how about a pet?

My husband and I could agree on only two names when I was pregnant the first time:  Barbara or Sandra, with either Lynn or Louise as the middle name.  On the way to the hospital, he asked me, "What if it's a boy?"  Back in 1960, no one knew which sex until the baby arrived.  I answered, "I guess David, since it's the only one we both like."  Surprise!  It was twin girls, so we used all four names we had chosen.  The first to arrive was Barbara Lynn, and Sandra Louise arrived three minutes after her identical twin sister.  Three years later, we still couldn't find any other names we both liked, so I assured my husband it would be a boy.  It was, and we named him David Alan.  I tell people we couldn't have any more children because we had run out of names.

3.   I named the stand mixer in my kitchen Ethel, and a friend of mine names her plants.  Do you ever name household items, and what inspires the names behind them?

I named my first plant a few days ago.  Her name is Phil, short for Philomena, because she's a Philodendron.  I named her because my daughter-in-law named the 50-year-old philodendron I gave her when I moved to St. Louis.  Before that, it had never occurred to me to name a plant.  Phil is doing fine in her spot above the kitchen sink.

Model of a Lightning sailboat

4.  Do you daydream about what you might name a boat, a novel, a business, or something else that begs for a title?

No daydreaming.  In 1968, we named our sailboat Blue Streak, because we talked a "blue streak" about it before deciding to buy it and because it was a 19-foot Lightning class sailboat.  We painted the "S" of the name to look like a lightning streak.

5.   If you were to write under a pseudonym, what might that be, and is there a story behind that name?

Maybe Lillian Rose.  Lillian actually IS one of my names, and in the 1990s I used Lillian Rose just to see if I could "be" someone else in an online discussion with a group of my friends.  I "signed" my chat room name something like this:

Lillian @>-->---

No one ever guessed who I was until I told them what I'd been doing.