What's in a Name?

[dawn_felagund]

Random note:

Okay, as of five minutes ago, we are going to Bermuda! In March! Bobby and I needed to go somewhere to finish our open water dives for our scuba certifications, and we had promised my sister-in-law Erin to pay for part of a trip someplace cool with us for her 21st birthday. We'd originally considered going back to Puerto Rico, but in

Comments

[dawn_felagund]

You know, I don't mind too much when people simply say it wrong, particularly my husband's half, which is an odd name in the US. But when they decide to simply drop half of the name because they don't understand or don't like hyphenated names, that is really rude to me. Also, I don't really understand how people can get my half wrong, but when I was a kid and it was my full last name, people did, all of the time. You've seen my name, so you know that it's a common noun in the English language! It's kind of like your predicament, in having your name so close to können: It's a common enough word that you'd think native speakers would have no problem with it. Not the case.

Even then--even if I get called "Dawn Balls," which I did once--I can forgive it...but not when people choose not to see half the name. Don't they wonder what that part is, attached to the second bit with a hyphen? (And come on, even in the US, hyphenating is common among professional women! There is an agent I have to email on occasion with a hyphenated name, and I cc her supervisor with a hyphenated name, and nicely sign the email with my hyphenated name!)

Luckily, we have few naming rules here in the good ol' US of A. Which results in unfortunate names for children, at times, but even when Bobby and I got married, we were basically given a free pass to change our last names to whatever we chose.