Awesome names

[miss_pryss]

When I started 1st grade there was a girl in my class named Sheila. I immediately (and successfully) set out to become her best friend, because although I had never heard that name before, it sounded so much like She-Ra that I just knew I had to get in on that action.

***

Many, many years later I met someone named Angharad. At that point in my life I like to think I had moved beyond setting out to become someone's friend solely because I liked her name, so I'm pretty sure that when we became good friends it had more to do with the usual set of reasons people become friends than her many totally kick-ass fantasy-novel namesakes:

* Harry/Harimad-Sol/Angharad from Robin McKinley's "The Blue Sword"
* Angharad from Anne McCaffery's "Rowan" series
* Angharad, mother of Princess Eilonwy in Lloyd Alexander's "The Book of Three" series.

...but honestly, those namesakes didn't hurt.

Comments

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that the relative coolness of a name like Angharad would be undermined by the intense real-world problem of getting people to spell it correctly. (Which is a pitfall with most Welsh names, now that I think about it.)

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

My friend told me once that she had considered printing up a bunch of cards that said "The "H" is silent" and handing them to people when she was introduced to them.

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

I meant to say, "The "G" is silent!" oops...

[ukashin.livejournal.com]

remember when Ben L called her a beautiful welsh wench in the spec?

this has nothing to do with angharad but about me. also i thought the h wasn't silent - i thought the g was silent. have i been pronouncing her name wrong? ramble ramble. the point is that in 7th grade i started putting an accent over the e in my last name. i know the trials of mispronounced names. woe!

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

Oh, Ben L. My fiiiirst looooooove!

You're totally right -- it's the G that is silent. Oops!

And I hear you on that accent. Very tricksy, little hobbit!

[mltprincess.livejournal.com]

Might this have something to do with your own name?

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

God, you know what? I wasn't even *thinking* about my own name! But now I'm remembering a couple of nerdy guys who glommed onto me in high school for the obvious reason...