What's in a Name.

Because you're suppossed to be smart if you reference shakespeare in your title. Or actually if you reference pop culture that references shakespeare.

Anyway. What's in a last-name? Your whole history actually. Names mean nothing. Flights of fancies of bored parents, private jokes, or too much hospital time addling the brain. Truly nothing.

A last name however is a personal map. It tells you where you're from, it might even tell you you're whole family tree.

I have friends that know a lot about theirs. Who can trace it to all sort of nonsensical historical events. Girls who will always carry theirs even when hidden in the shadow of a husband.

Mine is made up. A mistake. A name that doesn't really belong to its region, born out of a Granparent that only talks to tell me kitschy stories about savage childhoods if only to never tell me the stories about what sort of man he was.

It is unique and I love it. It doesn't even bother me that my Mothers name is not in it. Because the few things I remember is that my Mother loved my Father's last name. She became one of the family, and signed all of her papers with it.

Familyname, indeed.