What's in a name??

Ahhhh....hello poor little neglected blog...."Shall we play a game?" (name that movie!)

Thanks to the blog challenges at SG (which I will be alternating weekly with Shandy) I am back and blahhhhhging!

So Shandy's challenge for today is

"Tell us about your NAME! yep, that's right... your name. How did your parents come up with it?... is there a story behind it?.... Do you like your name?... if you could have named yourself, would it have been the same or something different?... just go with it!... no rules! We just want to learn more about ya!"

My birth name is Lisa Ann. It was supposed to be Elizabeth Ann and my nickname was to be Lisa.

Lisa was a very popular name at the time and my mother wanted me named after her but with the option of going by a more informal name if I liked and LORD knows there are a whole slew of nicknames for Elizabeth

Let's see

Beth
Betsy
Betty
Liz
Lisa
Eliza

are just a few that I can conjure off the cuff.

But my FATHER, put the exnay on my mom's brilliant (in my opinion) plan because he HATES nicknames. He himself is Philip Edwin, JR, but since there was a Senior he was called Eddie.

And Eddie, oh Lord Eddie, he did have much hate for the nickname. So scarred was he by the indignity suffered that he decided at a VERY tender age that no child of his was going to go through the unspeakable horror of having a nickname they hated. So sayeth the daddy.

And really I can see his point because when I think of Eddie, all I can think of is Eddie Haskell from "Leave it to Beaver" and he was a smarmy, sneaky little shit of the first order.

So my dad said to my mom in the hospital...."Either "Elizabeth" or "Lisa", but not "Elizabeth and we'll call her Lisa" because then I will have to follow her around all the time and not so nicely correct them with my intimidating military glare if they should call her, oh I don't know, Beth and not only will she be scarred for life by the use of random nicknames but also by a father who embarrasses her"

And that's the truth.....or the combined version of the truth as told by my father, my mother and me!

And so sadly I am a Lisa when I really wanted to be an Elisabeth.

And my father and his obsession with no nicknames should have put two and two together and realized the initials of my name spelled LAP.

Yes.....LAP

I'll leave it to your imagination on how many nicknames those three little letters birthed!