Say my name

I have a very weird and contradictory relationship towards my name. I love it and I hate it. 

I think the hate comes from feeling like a God whose name shouldn't be misused (jk). My name is hard to pronounce, and even the Finns have troubles with it. So I rather hear it not used. Another thing is that because my close family don't use my real first name, my real name always sounds weird in my ears. Like people are not talking about me but someone else. It's a very Finnish name, though it's not that common. I guess I like the exoticism and the identificativeness (is that even a word?), uniqueness of it. But if I could choose, only the very privileged ones could use it to call me. Right now I can come up with only one person who I know can properly conjugate and pronounce it. Everyone else should stick with my middle name or one of the dozens nicknames I have.

For some people - and I understand it's important in the rural areas of the wild wild web - real name is important. I had an interesting conversation with an internetian friend about my name. He wanted to know it and I suggested he would call me Luci even though it's not my real name. Luci is easy, everyone can pronounce it and it's easy to remember. It's also girly as it's supposed to be and you can make several jokes about it. For example "Everybody loves Luci". And they do, trust me ;) Still some people insist using my real name. The name that has double k. And an r. *sigh*

Anyways, names are interesting. Nomen est omen and so on. But what if you can't remember the other persons name? Embarrasiiiing! I've heard stories of dating someone for many weeks, maybe even months and still not knowing the name of their partner. Think about it, how would you ask someone's name in that situation? "Umm... yeah, I'm really NOT that loose, and I know we'd already had sex, but... could you tell me your name again? I can't introduce you to my parents without it."

Good thing about regular names is that you can meet many people with the same name. Like my sister for example, she used to date one guy for years, let's call him Jack. After that relationship my sister found another Jack. When they broke up, I heard Jack went on a date with a girl with the same name as my sister. Easy to remember!

I've called people with nicknames so much that I sometimes forget their real names and that can lead to awkward situations. If I ever would lose my phone and someone kindhearted would find it and wanted to call a person close to me to let me know the phone has been found, he would be in a bit of a trouble. Who would you guess would be the right person to call; Pineapple, Breadcrum, Darkness or Hair? This is the reason btw why we should all use ICE (in case of emergency) before the name in our phones to indicate the correct person we would like to be called when (not if) something bad happens.

In conclusion: when you meet a new person, don't ask for his name. Instead, ask "What would you like me to call you?"