Did you have any interesting/strange name favorites or made-up names when you were little? (This is inspired by that recent blog post about the poster’s childhood namelist.)
I wasn’t interested in names until a few years ago, so I never had any long lists. The only name I made up was the alternate name I gave myself at maybe 5, which was Kaana ([name_u]Kay[/name_u]-ah-na) [name_f]Marylin[/name_f] [name_u]Leaf[/name_u]. My last name is not actually [name_u]Leaf[/name_u], nor is my mother’s name [name_f]Marilyn[/name_f] but I pretended it was? I don’t know what I was thinking.
Then there was my imaginary friend, whom at a similar age to making up Kaana I named [name_f]Mara[/name_f]. Yes, [name_f]Mara[/name_f] as in [name_f]Mara[/name_f]-from-the-Bible as in name-meaning-bitterness, and I named her that not for the pretty sound of the name but for the Biblical meaning. I was a strange and dramatic child, and at the time I believed my family was prejudiced against me and I was perfection embodied.
We - my little sister and I - had a bunch of dolls too, but they were, with one exception, named fairly conservative names - [name_f]Rebecca[/name_f], [name_u]Joyce[/name_u], [name_f]Carrie[/name_f], [name_f]Mary[/name_f], and [name_f]Caroline[/name_f].
My sister’s alternate name was [name_f]Joanna[/name_f], and she at age 3 was responsible for that exception, our most, um, creative doll name. Oppicheeto. (Opp-uh-cheeto.) Inspired by Cheetos.
Later, when I was around 11 or 12, I loved lots of flowery-nature-E names that I’ve completely burned out on now, and some made-up ones. My list would have been something like [name_f]Elsa[/name_f] (before Frozen), [name_f]Elva[/name_f], Fauna, Ella, [name_f]Lilia[/name_f], Verda, [name_f]Elle[/name_f], [name_f]Eva[/name_f], Aira, Fira, Sylva, and then I also liked weekday names, month names, and gemstone names, but none in particular.