Thursday, March 29, 2012

It's AH-TREH-YAH

If I had resources to change my name, I'm really thinking if I should. I mean, how hard is it to say Atreja with the 'J' as a 'Y'? At-re-ya. Yeesh.


I suppose, I could just have it changed to a straight-up Atreya -- since Atreyu is acceptable. Why not, right? Or even Atria. It sounds pretty much the same. And it's kinda cool to be named after a star. I'm not really sure if I like "alpha of triangulum australe" as the meaning to my probably-would-be name, but hey. Cool is cool.


I'm not really hating on my name, though. In fact, I quite like it and am very much attached to it. It makes me unique. How many people have a name like mine, right? I just really, really don't appreciate people mispronouncing AND misspelling it time and again. This one time, when I got the certificate for being part of the Dean's List, my name was spelled as ALTREJA.


ALTREJA! And people expect it to be pronounced as AL-TREH-HA. WHAT KIND OF A NAME IS ALTREJA?


And then another time, when in my grandfather's wake, my own relatives misspelled my name. Atrajaja indeed. I've never lived it down. In fact, my sister affectionately calls me Atra now. (I'm pretty sure that's also my name in her contacts.) I've grown used to it, but gorramit if it wasn't annoying the first time.


And, you know, I think it would be nice to not have red underlines on my name for once. Just saying. Things could be shiny.