What if I had been named Jacqueline

Do you like your name?

I have never liked my name very much.

I have always been called Jeanie, but my name is really Dorothy Jean. Dorothy was sort of an old fashioned name when I was a child, and unlike names like Claire and Grace and Madeline it has never come back in to fashion.

A post I read recently, which you can see here, http://noexcuses318.blogspot.com/ , about the "What ifs" in life took me all the way back to "what if" I had been given a different name. I was supposed to have been named Sally, but I was born on a relative's birthday and the plan changed. The only people who ever called me Dorothy Jean were my father (it was his relative) and my brother when he wanted to make me mad.

Would my life have been any different if that relative had been named Amanda or Sarah, or if she had been Edith or Myrtle? Would I have seen myself differently if she had been Alice or Edna? There is a whole field of research built around names....their origins, their meanings, what's currently popular and what's not, but none of it tells me if I would be a different person if I had been named Jacqueline.

How do you relate to people based on their names? Do you relate differently to a Tiffany than to a Velma. Do you like your name?

I have always been and will always be Dorothy Jean, and I will always say my name is Jeanie, unless I'm voting or getting on an airplane, but I will always wonder "what if".