Curiouser and Curiouser

FF-1: A Meaningful Name

White pawn to 6th row/rank - Humpty Dumpty insists that all names must have meaning. Does your name mean anything in particular to you? If not, create a unique name with a unique meaning.

My name is Rhyssa, And sadilou. I also go by teowyn sometimes. Sadilou is the closest to my given names. In fact, when I was very young, my parents called me Sadie Lou because that was short for my given names. Sadie is a family name—I'm named after my father's mother's mother's mother and my mother's father's father's father's mother. Lou is for my middle name which I share with my mother. I made it into one name because that's how they used to call me—like in the song:

Sadilou loves to stand
And turn herself around
Shake the left and shake the right
But best of all, sit down

I started using Rhyssa and teowyn as names one Christmas because I wanted to give more presents to the family, but my mom used to count gifts to make sure everyone got equal presents to open, so in order not to upset the count, we'd invent a name to give a round of gifts under. The Rhyssa gifts were the posh ones, the sadilou gifts were the sweet ones, and the teowyn gifts were the cheap ones.

Rhyssa was a name I invented to name a place for my senior project in college. The project was a series of short stories loosely based on the Arthur legends, which I connected with Ys and then complicated a bit—so Rhyssa was the same of the city that lives under the sea, and in my head was named after the King's dead wife . . . who was the daughter of the Sea . . . complicated, I know. I graduated from college in 1998 and then spent a year and a half in England, and then I joined writing.com in 2001, so it felt appropriate to select that as my official handle.

Teowyn is a name that I invented when making a D&D character—a half-elf bard. So basically, I strung a bunch of consonants together and added vowels until it sounded Elvish. The whole thing was Teowynshiara, but that was too long to shout, so we called her Shiara when we were playing. But I liked the teowyn part, and so when I was coming up with a user name for another site, I used it.

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