I have always loved the letter V. How could I not, with a name like Valerie Van Essen? It seemed like my very own letter and if anyone else had a V in their name it was usually just one, so I definitely had claim to the letter in its entirety.
Now I have a few kids who have the same sort of infatuation with their own letters so I'm relieved to know that it is somewhat typical to feel that way.
Growing up, I never knew another Van Essen outside of my own family. But when I moved away from Nebraska to Ontario for college I started getting asked if I was the daughter of two people with the same last name as me that I'd never heard of. So that's how I discovered there was another family with the same last name as me. They spelled it the same way, with a space and a capital letter on the second half. It turned out that they were really nice people and we had lots of mutual friends and contacts and I actually didn't mind at all that people wondered if I was their child. I hope I didn't cause them to get a bad name either! (Nothing like a 19 year old you didn't raise running around with the same uncommon last name as you!)
When I got married I dropped one of my V's but of course I still consider it my favorite letter. :)
2 comments:
What a lovely name. You were lucky to have an unusual name. It means people always remembered who you were and that could probably be both good and bad.
V is a cool letter, but hard to find anything personalized. I have two sister-in-laws with V names and could not find any V anything for them at Christmas.
Your name sounds lyrical.
ScribblesFromJenn
Happy A to Z-ing!
Post a Comment