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Both my sister and I were named for our respective grandparents, given my Mum's solid insistence that she was always going to have a boy and a girl I do wonder what she'd done if one of us had upset that careful plan. So my first name is my paternal grandfather's, who died long before I was born, and my middle name is my maternal grandad's.
When I was young it was a bit of a pain as it was unusual enough that I was the only one in school with it, plus most of the people I've met have tended to spell it the French way, I don't know of anyone with it as a first name who's spelt it the English way.
Since secondary school most of my friends have been calling me by the shortened version, 'loz', which is quite cool, even though the most well known 'Loz' was 'Hardy' of 'Kingmaker', but I think I managed to avoid that association. Now only relatives and bosses at work tend to call me by the full version of my name, most everywhere else it's 'Loz'.
Nicknames at school were contributing to my dislike of the full version of my name, 'Florence Nightingale', 'Lawrence of Arabia' and the weird antisocial kid who never washed and no-one liked but who would fight anyone who insisted on 'Florence of Arabia'.
I don't think, after it all, that I would change my name to anything else, I've kind of grown used to the oddness which, once out in the real world, isn't really as odd as when you're stuck in a little village primary school. It does present problems in that I don't think it's a good name for a writer, I did have a pen name worked out a few years ago which was ridiculous and bad-Gothy, but that's now fallen out of disfavour and I'm just dealing with writers block as a way to ignore the question of what to call myself. |
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