Keladry

My feelings about my name are actually pretty similar to what Sarah said about hers yesterday.  My name is so darn common.  I know so many Katies it's just ridiculous.  I can remember wanting to change my name as far back as grade 6.  Oddly, though, most of the names I've wanted to change to over the years have been derivatives of my full name, Kathleen.

In grade 6 I secretly wished my name was Kitty, and at some point during junior high I remember thinking the name Leeny would be cool... in retrospect, that would have been a bad plan.  That's not even a name.  I guess that's probably why it appealed to me at the time, because I knew no one else would have the same name.

Once I reached high school the number of Katies got diluted a bit, so I lost interest in changing my name, but at some point one of my friends decided to start an initiative to get everyone to call me Kathy.  He actually managed to keep it up for about a week, but it didn't catch on with anyone else, so he gave it up.

I guess so far this has mostly been "Things I used to want to change my name to" rather than "what I would change my name to if I had to," but oh well.  There are lots of names that I like, but most of them are things that I've thought about in the mindset of potential future baby names, so it would seem weird to pick on of those, even though I think Ayla and Kaya are some of the prettiest names ever.

I think if I had to change my name I'd want to choose something symbolically important to me; a name that I associate with something that I want to be.  I think I would choose Keladry, after the protagonist of  Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series, because Kel is so strong and brave and everything I've always wished I was but have never been.