I've written about nicknames before - how I've always been a Ramona and not a Mona. But reading the obituaries this morning started me thinking about nicknames again. This is the way the obituary started: "Elizabeth (originally "Betsy" and later, "Liz")....." It got me thinking about how some people do change their names as they go through life. In this woman's case, perhaps her family called her Betsy as a child - which I do think is more a girl's name - and she decided to be Liz as she got older. To me Liz is more a woman's name - more worldly or sophisticated; more adult.
A few years ago I met a woman whose name was Thea. I assumed it was short for Dorothea or Theodora or even Theodosia. Nope. Her name was Cynthia, which she had gone by for many years. Then one day she decided she was a Thea. She suggested I should change my name - not to Mona, but to Rae. As in "Re - a drop of golden sun?" (Think Sound of Music.) Do I look like a Rae? Was she suggesting I would start acting younger, more hip, more fun, if I were a Rae?
I have a niece who started calling me Aunt Jamona when she was very young. I believe it was because she couldn't say (or remember) Aunt Ramona but because of the breakfast foods in their house, she could say Aunt Jemima which got translated as Aunt Jamona.
And that little nickname remembrance is how my blog became more about Aunt Jemima and less about what I started out to write. This is the way Aunt Jemima appeared until about 1957. The woman who portrayed the character for the Quaker Oats Company was Nancy Green. Her story is rather interesting. If you like, you can read about it here.
My Grandma Ridnour collected salt and pepper shakers. In her collection she had a set like this one.
And I am almost certain we had a syrup pitcher like this one for our Aunt Jemima syrup.
No matter how old little Lorrie Anne gets, she is still going to call me Aunt Jamona. So I guess I do have a nickname after all. For an interesting article about 'what's in a name?' there's this one by Sam Sommers.
And lastly something I remember my Dad used to say when trying to teach us right from wrong: "Your name is all you've got."
I went through life with no nickname until I discovered the Internet. I made an AOL screen name, Mo2773. Mo was for Missouri, and the numbers were the last four digits of my phone number at that time. Then I discovered an AOL chat room, and everybody there started calling me Mo. The chat room is long gone, but a lot of those old chat friends are now Facebook friends, and they still call me Mo.
ReplyDeleteDonna - I had a blog follower "Mobugs" for a while. I think she was a Missouri entomologist.
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