My Life Monday: My parents named me Shelah because...

My name is an example of how my mom always gets her way in my parents' marriage. When she was three or four, there was a little neighbor girl who was five or six. Her name was Sheila. My mom idolized Sheila, following her around the neighborhood, and Sheila tolerated it. They played together and Sheila gave my mom the chicken pox. Eventually, one of them moved away, and my mom never saw Sheila again.

My dad also had a childhood experience with a girl named Sheila (it seems like all of the other girls named Sheila are of my parents' generation, like being named Linda or Nancy or something like that). In my dad's case, Sheila was a big, mean, fat babysitter who came to his house when his parents went out and made life miserable for him and his three younger brothers. As a result, he had a bad feelings toward the name, much like I feel about the names of some of my former students.

Anyway, when my mom got pregnant with me (after four years of marriage, a miscarriage and three years of unexplained infertility), she had her heart set on the name Sheila. I imagine that my dad felt that he was in no position to argue (he usually feels that way). But, just to add interest, she decided to add a twist and spell it "S-H-E-L-A-H" (which, yes, is one of the sons of Judah in the Old Testament, as the Israeli obstetrician I used to see pointed out to me). By spelling it in such an unusual way, I was guaranteed to spend the first twentysomething years of my life spelling both my first and last names for everyone (my maiden name is Czech, unspellable and unpronounceable, and to add insult to injury, means "greasy"-- so you would think that parents with that kind of last name would be kind and name their kids normal, easy to spell names, but that didn't happen). 

As you can probably tell, I didn't love my name growing up. My younger siblings got much more normal names (Ethan and Jillian) and I was always a little bit resentful of that. In high school I even considered going by my middle name (Katherine, after my great-grandmother), but eventually decided that I didn't want to start World War III in my house.

So, Shelah I am. I was glad to exchange my crazy last name for something much simpler and easier to spell. And I have tried to stay away from unusually spelled names for my own kids (Bryce, Annie and Isaac). My brother, who still has the crazy last name, must have been spoiled by his normal first name. He and his wife have named their two younger girls Jamila and Kanani. But he's a lot like my dad, and his wife, like my mom, always wins.

--originally published 5/22/06