MY NAME STORY

My violet is blooming again - can spring be far behind?

This has nothing to do with my story!

Interesting post I found over at Anneliese’s blog! So, here’s my name story.  My mother named me Brigitte Karin.  She tells me there was a pretty actress at the time of whom she was quite fond. When I became interested in the meanings of names I also checked mine out. Brigitte means ‘strength’ and Karin ‘pure'. While I look big and strong, I’m neither strength nor pure! 

In the old country my name was pronounced correctly and I liked it. Being an immigrant with a name that wasn’t that common in English, my classmates and friends at church started calling me variations of the name.  That didn’t sit well with me.  The immature boys called me Brigitte Bardot, then a model and later a French animal rights activist. That’s not who I was and being called that was embarrassing!

Others simply called me ‘bridge’ or brigeeda. Those who didn’t like me, called me bird s**t, and that was the straw that broke this camel’s back. None of those nicknames appealed to me, lol!  When I joined the work force at age 15 to help the family budget, I decided simply to use my second name, Karin! More confusion! OK, now I was Brigitte to all my German friends and acquaintances, but Karin everywhere English was spoken.  Some friends even called me the one name when they spoke German to me, and the other when we spoke English!  Some call me what they want to and I’ve learned just to let it be!

Nephews and Nieces call me either Tante or Auntie Karin!  And good friends affectionately say, “Hey, how’s it goin’?” and don’t bother with the name.  The only pet peeve I have about all of this is if close friends cannot remember to spell my name KARIN instead of all the other varieties, even when I have nicely pointed it out to them. I’m quite sure that I’ve been called all manner of things behind my back, but what I don’t know doesn’t bother me that much!

When hubby and I started dating his endearments were Schatzie, Honey, and sometimes, even Gitte, the tail end of my first name!  Honey has stuck over the years and that’s my favorite one for hubby too!  Our children have called me mom and our grandangels call me Oma! Now that’s my all-time favorite moniker! 

We still chuckle about what our oldest granddaughter called me one time. I always called her ‘sweetheart’.  One day she was telling her mom, “Oma is a retard!” Her mom was taken aback and wondered just what brought this on, until she realized that the little one was just calling me what I was calling her, SWEETHEART!

The one thing about my name that I love the best is that it is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life! Praise the Lord!