Tuesday, December 28, 2010

New Name

I'm participating in Reverb 10 for the month of December. Each day has a new prompt to encourage participants to reflect on 2010 and manifest what’s next in 2011.
December 23 – New Name. Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why? (Author: Becca Wilcott)
Haha, my blog name was inspired by Bella, whose blog I read very frequently.  I don't think of myself as beautiful (bella in Italian), but maybe I could pull off cute (carina in Italian).  Overall, I'm fine with my name, though my middle name comes from my ex-aunt (uncle's ex-wife, bitter divorce), so that kind of sucks. 

Oh, and I should add that I am very opinionated and strongly oppose sexist name changes.  Though I love the idea of sharing a last name with my husband, this would only be okay with me if roughly equal numbers of men and women changed their last name upon marriage; while it remains sexist and only women participate in this practice, I don't want to participate.  So I haven't changed my name, I like both my last name and my husband's last name and I think our last names could be fused into a beautiful new last name, but he's not on board with that.  But fortunately, he's Italian and in Italy women don't change their names upon marriage (don't think it's progressive though, it's out of respect for the woman's father).  Since we want to move to Italy some day, we don't want to have the same last name -- men and women there who have the same last name are siblings, and that's just creepy! 

But let's see, what else would be a good name?  Growing up, I always wanted to be named Amy or Jennifer like all my friends. 

By the time I got to high school, I think I'd settled on my true alter ego name:  Cassiopia Emerald, so I guess that's what I'd choose.  I could go by Cassie, which is quite carina.  Or I could be Emmie, which I'm not as enthused about now as I was in high school.  And I'd probably have sparkling green eyes to go with the name (since I don't, if that were my name, maybe I'd get colored contacts). 

So hello blog reader(s), my name for today would be Cassiopia Emerald.  Enchante (to throw in some French).  Or "piacere" (to get ready for my Italian 2011).  I'd choose the name because it sounds so interesting, exotic, alive and unique.  My name isn't super common, but it's certainly something you hear about a million times more than Cassiopia! 

I've never used a fake name that I can remember when meeting someone, though I suppose I may have done it when meeting some guy or something.  One time in law school, I went on a spring break road trip with two friends and we ended up at a party in Atlanta primarly attended by people who were attending a "lesser" law school.  One of my friends had clerked with someone at the school, which was our connection.  But we didn't know anyone else at the party, so we thought it would be fun to pretend to be something other than law students from our law school.  So one friend told people at the party she was a roadie for the Dave Matthews Band, another told people she was a tarot card reader, and I told people I worked in the exchange department at the National Zoo (so when you see a sign that an animal is on loan from another zoo, I'd have set that up and I was in Atlanta to see about bringing their giraffes up to DC for two years) (I had the whole story worked out).  It was fun but of course we couldn't keep it up for more than a couple hours.  I don't even know if zoos have exchange departments!

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