Recap of 7th Living Out Loud project: By any other name

This topic was a challenge only in that I think I could write half a dozen blog posts about my name(s), but had to pare it down into something shorter than War and Peace. And as always, I learned all kinds of new things about folks based on what they wrote. Let's see what everyone submitted: Lisette's By any other name ... (note: I reminded her to fix the LJ security so everyone can read but she's on vacation this week so it make take a bit) Rachelle is a unique name, and I can see how lots of folks would say Rachel instead. But I'm a sucker for French names.

Becca's Daddy's little girl Again, hooray guest post! I'm sucking her into the blogging world! I consider it a special treat that I got to spend as much time as I did with her dad when we were teenagers. Becca's dad rocks as does Becca herself.

Jen's Short but sweet comment I give Jen a pass on posting a whole entry on this since she's been mired in pavilion repair and preparations for camping. But again, I'm a sucker for French names and honored she chose hers based on mine.

Donal's What IS my real name? I have known him as Donal for a long time before I even knew what his "real" name was. But it just goes to show that "real" is all relative. I also like the idea of letting people pick a name for themselves once they reach adulthood.

Julia/JD's They call me Julia so you don't have to When I was in second grade my teacher Ms. Young called me Jenny instead of Genie (there were 8000 Jennifers around that time) and it drove me INSANE. She stopped once I started calling her Ms. Yang.

Gina's Living Out Loud #7 I learned a lot reading this. I'm not named for anybody, so the idea of living up to a name is foreign to me. But I'd say Noni would be proud.

Candice's Me, myself, and I... oh, um, and that fourth one: my four names. Miinna is officially one of the coolest names ever. And I think there should be a whole book written on different cultures and what is "customary" to do about changing names after marriage. It's important to do what feels right and not just what "everyone" is doing.

Justus' So what's your real name? Interestingly enough, when Justus joined Facebook recently I wondered "hmm, is Justus his real name?". I guess it is. And as far as names go, Justus is pretty kick ass.

Megan's Our shared name It goes to show that you can always change your mind about a name at any point in your life. As someone who spent a lot of time pondering what to do with all my names after marriage (#1 and #2), I can appreciate all of this.

Deb's What's in a Name My cousin wanted to name her daughter Siobhan and we all said that she would either have to move to Ireland or join the SCA to have anyone pronounce it correctly. But it's still one of my favorite names.

Sarah's What's in a name? I think the h in Sarah is very important as well. It makes it seem like a softer spelling, like you're saying ahhh in a relaxing way. And I can also appreciate having a ton of names and wanting to keep them all.

Sharyn's Writing about my name Much like Sharyn, my aunt's name is Rebecca but we all call her Sissy. At one point she was concerned that we kids did not know her "real" name, but we know who she really is.

Orianna's By any other name It's fascinating to me how the title of Aunt can be as powerful as Mom. Titles are what we make of them.

Kim's No Full Name, Please I laughed out loud at "See: My strong dislike of the letter B which has no good reason." That and picking out names is agonizing and so fun!

Karal's It rhymes with Meryl My favorite line is "when I was 5, I wanted to be Sally — but I think I wanted to be Charlie Brown’s little sister more than I wanted to actually take her name." A highly googlable but super neat name.

Vic's Onomatology I first met him as squorch and then had to figure out who this Vic person was on FaceBook. But I'm curious where Ike came from.

Rich's Name? Which One? I must defend his Welsh name and demand that people not just throw in a few extra consonants for good measure when spelling it. Two dd's make a th sound and that's about it. And he didn't even tell you all the names I have for him.

And finally my own Who do you think I am?

Holy crap, people, you've blown me away with all the participation! 18 participants this month, seven of which are new to the LOL project! See how fun this is?!

I even started collecting this recap yesterday and it's still taken me a bit to sort it all out. As always, if I somehow lost your entry, let me know and I'll amend the recap.

With so many quality entries, I struggled the most on picking a winner this month. But as we all know, the writing and the comments and feedback are the big deal more than whatever I can provide as a trophy.

So this month, I pick Becca as the winner. Her prize is I'm sending her a batch of cookies because I have my own fond memories of hanging out in her kitchen watching Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and making pounds and pounds of chocolate chip cookies. And she will always be her Daddy's "little cookie."

I already have the theme lined up for this month's project but I may not post about it until Monday or later. This project brings me so much joy that I just want to thank you all for playing along. I hope you get as much out of it as I do. I can't wait for next month!

Who do you think I am?

"Starting in August, you can't use nicknames on boarding passes." The TSA agent smiled at me, pointing at the Genie on my boarding pass and the Genevieve on my driver's license. I stammered out an "oh, ok" and continued through the "expert traveler" line. And as I walked away, I was a little annoyed. It's not like I walked up with a boarding pass that says Skippy or Booger on it. Genie seems like a reasonable approximation of Genevieve as much as John is for Johnathan. What fascinates me more, though, is that she didn't seem to care that my boarding pass said Powell and my driver's license says Stryker.

My full name is Genevieve Alisa Powell Stryker. My father picked out the names Genevieve Alisa and decided that I would be called Genie for short. At one point I was going to be named Carrie Elizabeth after his mother but she balked at it. Truth be told, as much as I love my grandmother, I'm happy to have my own names.

I love my names. All of them. I love the uniqueness of Genevieve and Alisa. I love the shortened name of Genie. I love that I have the same initials as my father George Allen.

When Jeremy and I were getting married, I asked my parents if they had an opinion on how I changed my name. I wanted to take Jeremy's last name (Grimm is a pretty cool name). I wanted to be Mrs. Grimm. But I was only 21 and I wasn't quite ready to give up being a Powell. My parents, being who they are, said they had no opinion and I could do whatever I wanted. I chose to drop the Alisa so that I would have my birth last name on legal documents and the initials of GPG seemed a bit more appealing than GAG.

Jeremy and I were married for three and a half years. I realized that I liked the idea of being Mrs. Grimm, but I wasn't really enjoying everything else that came with it. When our divorce was final, I went about restoring my name back to its original. And that's a lot harder than it seems.

For those of you who haven't divorced, let me fill you in on how that works. It's nothing like getting married (in many many ways). There is no simple one page form that you get at city hall called a "divorce certificate." The only proof I have that I was no longer Genevieve Powell Grimm is nine pages long and mixed in with the details of who is taking which shares of debt and the reasons for our divorce. Not exactly something you want to fax to your credit card company to get a new name on your card.

As I went through all the machinations of getting my name back, I realized that names are not really as simple as we were all lead to believe. You will always be the person that is on your birth certificate. It is one of the versions of you. You don't ever truly lose that name. No one hands you a new birth certificate at the church when you get married. So as I worked my way through all the paperwork, I realized I was never going to going to get rid of Grimm. And thankfully, I'm okay with that.

I changed my name at work back to Powell. But being the ripe age of 24, everyone assumed it was because I had gotten married and not divorced. Customers on the phone would says "oh congratulations!" and I would say "thanks, but it's not for what you think." I also learned that as long as I keep paying the gas bill, it's really more trouble than it's worth to try to get the bill to come to Genie Powell instead of Janie Grimm. Janie Grimm just kept writing checks until Rich and I moved out of that house last year.

So many women want to salt the earth when it comes to their names, perhaps because they never really liked it in the first place. And for those of us who truly do love all our names, we are led to believe that we have to sacrifice something as part of the marriage. Either give up the middle name to keep your birth last name as a middle, drop your birth last name and replace it with your husband's last name, or keep your name and be the odd one out as your children all become a part of your husband's clan. Sure, you can get creative with names, but most of us see the previous three as our only choices.

Having gone back to my original name after the divorce I realized how much it meant to me. My father was born and raised on Powell Road. We talked in our house about what Powells do and how that clan interacts. In particular, I really wanted to have Alisa back. I use geniealisa as my username for nearly everything and it made me sad to have lost the documentation for that part of me. So from 2002 to 2007, I rocked out with my birth name, owning it far more than I ever did from 1977 to 1998.

And then Rich came along. And we decided to get married. And I wanted to be a part of his clan as well. I ruminated over the possible choices once again. After we were married, I took my paperwork to the social security office, unsure of how I would leave the building. I sat down with an elderly clerk in the office and he asked me what I wanted to change my name to. I told him that I just wanted to add another name and bump everything up one. He looked confused at first until I smiled and said, "I'm a pack rat, even with names." He laughed and said if I could spell it all out for him he'd do whatever I wanted. So I now have two first names - Genevieve Alisa. My middle name is Powell and my last name is Stryker. I signed everything and we shook hands and within a week I had a new driver's license that said Stryker, Genevieve Alisa Powell. Pretty simple, hunh?

Simple until the rest of the world gets involved. I have one credit card that says Genevieve A Stryker and another that says Genevieve P Stryker, both through the same bank. I have mail that comes to Genie P Stryker and Genie A Stryker. Our Honda was sold to Genevieve Alisa P Stryker. And the damn gas bill still comes to Gennie Striker (seriously, people, this is not that hard).

I also made a conscious decision to keep my birth name at work. In the last five years, I had become much more vocal in my work's community and everyone knew me as Genie Powell. I also worked in the same company as my new husband and he was pretty visible with new clients as well. I didn't want to be "Rich's wife" and more importantly I didn't want him to be "Genie's husband" as the first point of contact.

Thus began the journey of living as two separate people. When I walk into the office, I am Genie Powell. I register for conferences with that name, I answer the phone as that name, I use email as that name. I am that person. And when I leave the office and go home, just like Mr. Rogers I take off my Powell blazer and put on my Stryker cardigan. I answer personal emails and phone calls as Genie Stryker, I live my life as Mrs. Stryker. And instead of feeling torn between two worlds, I feel like I have the best of everything. All of these names are mine.

When I travel, I hand the TSA agent a boarding pass that says Genie Powell (the same name on all my business credit cards) and a driver's license that says Genevieve Alisa Powell Stryker. And for a little over two years now not one agent has even batted an eye. I actually get more grief from the Southwest Airlines ticket agents worried that I won't be able to claim my checked bag once I land. We shall see when I get on a plane Monday morning if someone will suddenly care that I'm Genevieve and not Genie or even Stryker and not Powell.

When I got married the first time, I worried about giving up a name and gnashed my teeth at the unfairness of women in our culture having to choose something to sacrifice. After divorcing and re-marrying, I realized that I actually get to keep all those names. I have more aliases than some secret agents, I'm sure, but they're all me.

My name is Genevieve Alisa Powell Stryker, but you can call me Genie.

Guest Post: Daddy's little girl

Since I kept harassing Becca to start a blog, I'm super pleased that she's both posting her SYTYCD recaps at Honey, I KNOW I Can Dance and entered her first LOL entry this month!

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I was born Rebecca Marie—a combination of my Great Grandmother’s and Grandmother’s names. Through the years I’ve gone from being a Rebecca, to a Becca, and now to Becs with very close friends. It’s interesting—these names evolve independent of me; I still introduce myself as Rebecca—but I relish the sense of friendship and familiarity inherent in these nicknames.

My most treasured nickname, however, was bestowed upon me by my Daddy before I was a week old. Family legend states that when I came home from the hospital, my Dad immediately cradled me in his arms and exclaimed “My little cookie! You’re finally home!” From then on, in verbal or written correspondence, I was his “little cookie”.

My Dad has been battling Alzheimer’s disease for years now, and most of the time, he doesn’t know who I am. But during one recent visit, he turned to me, recognition blooming in his eyes, and said “My Little Cookie!! You have given me so much joy.” Those words are perhaps the greatest gift I’ve ever received. I’m his little cookie—then, now, and always.