My beautiful daughter is now 8 months old, and every time I've taken her to the doctors office, without fail the nurse comes out and calls for "Kaylee Ires" aaaaaaaah! Could anything be more annoying? As I'm sure I've mentioned before, KALEI is the traditional Hawaiian spelling of her name but since we don't live in Hawaii and white people won't take the time to figure it out, this has been extremely problematic. I could just picture every teacher she ever has doing exactly the same thing as the doctor's office. Now there's nothing I can do about the mispronunciation of our last name, but I'll not stand for it when it comes to her first name. About 2 weeks ago I was really feeling bothered about the situation so I went to Russ with my concern and expressed my desire to change the spelling of her name. At first he just assumed that I was having one of those premenstrual crazy moments and told me to get over it, but after a fair amount of persistence, he gave in.
I came up with a few spellings that I felt could be easily read, and asked for the opinions of random strangers at the local craft store. Sounds crazy but they were happy to help. I finally decided on CALLAE. Russ agreed so we went down to the vital records office and ordered the new birth certificate.
As parents I think we all want to make our children's lives as easy as possible, and I'm sure the somewhere along the line somebody will find a way to screw it up, but at least I can sleep soundly knowing that I've done my best to give her a beautiful name that she can live with.
I came up with a few spellings that I felt could be easily read, and asked for the opinions of random strangers at the local craft store. Sounds crazy but they were happy to help. I finally decided on CALLAE. Russ agreed so we went down to the vital records office and ordered the new birth certificate.
As a mother who changed both my kids names, I totally "get it"! Callae is just too precious.
ReplyDeleteI get it too! That's extremely frustrating. I often wonder if people take the time to actually read it before they try to say it. Sorry it got so frustrating but I really like the spelling you chose! It's a very pretty name!
ReplyDeleteI think you should have asked Russ to move to Hawaii instead - problem solved!! ;) No one ever got my name right and most of the time it was people who just didn't care to actually look at my name and read it.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so I have some feelings about this on both sides.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, we all know that my name is ridiculously difficult to pronounce. I once worked for this sweet amazing woman for years, who still calls me Danielle to this day. So I can empathize with years and years of mispronunciations. I would just see people read my name, pause, and before they attempted I would just say "that's me". At times I love my name, at times it can be rough.
On the other hand, being a teacher, it was always challenging those first couple of weeks trying to figure out who was "Hailee or Hallie" or "Marin or Maryn," and why in the world would you name your daughter Quynhahn?
Anyways, I am now stepping off my soapbox with this: It's your daughter, and you need to be happy with her name, and happiness can occur no matter what we are called, or how it is spelled, here on earth. The End.
I say, good for you! I think trying to make your daughter's life a little less frustrating is fantastic! Part of the joy of having children (a very small part of the joy:0) is naming them what we want and spelling it any way we see fit. When I was told Sadie was a dog's name, did I care? Nope. And you don't have to care what anyone thinks. It's your kid. You get to make the choices. :0)
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