EDIT; since subscribing doesn’t seem very popular amongst my lurkers/readers, I have another option for you: Bloglovin’. Yes, everyone has been talking about this & I just figured out what all the fuss is about. (Between you & me, the fuss is absolutely justified. This site is fantastic.)
So please, if subscribing makes your stomach queasy, be sure to at least follow my blog with bloglovin’.
:]
I was just about to take killer pictures of these high-waisted, mustard colored vintage pants that were handed down to me from someone special… but much to my dismay, Lover informed me that he took the camera today. While I could complain & say that this is horrible timing, it’s actually okay because I’m having a bad hair day anyway. & now I have to find something else to talk about; drat!
Now, it’s quite obvious that my name (Ev’Yan) is unusual. I’ve never met a single soul who had my name, but I have met several people whose names closely resembled mine (Evian, Evyan, etc.). Similar, yes… but not the same.
& while I absolutely adore my name, I sometimes get frustrated that it’s not… ordinary. If I had a dime for every time my name was mispronounced or misspelled… well, I would have a lot of dimes. I’ve heard it all: Avalon, Evanon, Evanee, Evan, Eeviyan, Evelyn, & even Avion. It sometimes baffles me how people can mispronounce my name that much; I mean, really… where did those L’s come from? Have people forgotten the kindergarten rule of sounding out the letters? Of course they haven’t! They’re just terribly lazy. Most of them, anyway.
So because of this, there was a point where I hated my name; simply loathed it. Because it was always downgraded to such disappointing pronunciations & I felt awkward & out of place in school. For the longest time — & this is kind of embarrassing for me to admit — I wished my name was Erika. Spelled precisely like that, too… with the quirky “K” instead of a “C.” There are a few diaries, actually, where I sign off as “Erika.” This offended my mother extremely; she created this name out of her own imagination & I was shunning it outright!
(For the record: contrary to popular belief, my name was not contrived from the French water, Evian. I get this all the time & no, it has nothing to do with Evian water.)
Thanks to maturity, I grew out of that wretched “Erika” phase & learned to love my name for what it is. Creative & classy; French-sounding & delicate; original & flawless. Not to mention… it suits me much better than “Erika.”
But I do wish that my name were common enough to be in a song. You know… those beautiful, sorrowful songs sung by men — or women — about lost loves or longful emotions. You will never hear a man singing about “Ev’Yan” … unless, of course, I happen to entice the mind of a rockstar. (Chris Martin has first dibs; if not him, then Ben Gibbard.)
Here are my favorite songs about unknown people with common names that I have fallen in love with. The music behind the story creates a fairytale, making me wish desperately I would have been named something so romantic (or thought-provoking) … but only until the song ends.
- 311 :: Amber
- Damien Rice :: Amie
- Dido :: Isobel
- Yann Tiersen :: La Valse D’Amelie
- Air :: Kelly Watch the Stars
- The Beatles :: Eleanor Rigby
- Blonde Redhead :: Melody
- The Blood Brothers :: Cecilia
- Vince Guaraldi :: Linus & Lucy
- Regina Spektor :: Samson
- Death Cab for Cutie :: What Sara Said
- My Chemical Romance :: Helena
- Lifehouse :: Simon
- A Perfect Circle :: Judith
- Sting & The Police :: Roxanne
- The Beatles :: Girl (since this “girl” could be anyone, I like to pretend it’s me. After all, I am a girl.)
& what are YOUR favorite named-after-me songs?