What's in a name?

I have been intrigued by the many posts on Facebook over the last couple of days with individuals posting the meaning of their name. I finally found out that folks were going to urban dictionary.com and posting their own definitions.

I didn’t realize this at first. When I found out about the site, I did a search for my name. What came up completely surprised me. I was shocked, nay incensed to discover that my name is “code” for any number of nasty things. I won’t list them here, if you’re that curious, look it up yourself.

I have the unfortunate “pleasure” of my name being able to spell a different word when spelled backwards. And my name being what it is, Lana, “backwards” or the “rear” figures highly into the jokes being made about the name Lana.

There are not many people who share my name. Growing up, it was sometimes annoying when my name was pronounced differently than I was used to. It can be done any number of different ways. I grew up with it being pronounced LANuh, rhyming with banana. As an adult, I’ve grown to like the sound of LA nuh. For starters it sounds adult as opposed to what I grew up with. It’s all in the emphasis, but what can truly trigger an eye-roll from me is when people get creative. I’ve heard LAINuh and Lena I’m not sure how they got that, there is no i or e in my name.

It wasn’t until last year that I found out that I was named after Lana Turner. My aunt was a big fan of hers and liked the name. When my mom was expecting me, and when my aunt named her daughter something completely different, she asked her sister if it would bother her if she gave me the name, and the rest as they say is history.

And my classmates in high school wondered when I told them to just call me Lumpy…..so much less confusing and the tale on how I got that nickname is funny as well. But, I’m not telling it now - that’s a story for another day.