Whats In a Name

Name Paper

In English Amelia means to strive, to excel. Amelia is a dark smooth blue, like a silk pillow case. Amelia rings of songs made up by friends on dusty summer days wasting math and science classes, waiting for the final bell to ring. Amelia is the rugged, yet damp muffled secrecy of a forest. Amelia is an even-tempered dark blue with spontaneous streaks of bright new red. I dislike my name. It’s sharp and pointed, yet rolls off your tongue. It slides out into the air and hangs there.

I have a cousin who says Amelia like a cat’s meow, shortening it past the normal ‘melia to a “melw”. A strange slur that can be slipped into a sentence to make sure I’m paying attention. Amelia is from my grandmother, her middle name. Isn’t that strange, Amelia is a long middle name. Amelia as in Amelia Earhart and the Amelia Bedelia I will never live down.

I was Amelia Bedelia through grade school and finally was saved by the vacant minds of high school students. I dislike my name because it has an old feeling, like it should be written in some script now long forgotten, with a quill pen on fine parchment. Only sometimes when I around my friends on wonderful sunny summer days or a cold winter morning at school as I talk. I can become Mia, the modern shortened version of the Latin Amelia. It fits me better. Short, plain, simple, undistinguished, Mia allows me to remain in the background. Amelia brings me out into the open, exposes me.  If I was Mia, Never again would I have to be Amelia Bedelia.