Lle Llywela

Appropriated from agentxpndble

Name Meme:

1. Are you named after anyone? If so, explain.

Sort of. And almost was, sort of.

Throughout my mother's pregnancy with me I was intended to be called Elizabeth, to be known as Beth for short. But my great-grandmother, on hearing this, said "Oh, another Betty", since my Mum's mother had been Betty. She died when my Mum was nine. But my Mum didn't want me to be called Betty, and was afraid that if my great-gran called me that it would stick.

And then my Dad's sister Joan had a miscarriage - she was already over 40 and had been trying for years to have a baby, unsuccessfully. That pregnancy was her last chance and it failed. So I was named Joanna for Joan, and was her special baby out of all the nephews and nieces, because I was born at about the time that her lost baby would have been. She died just before I turned 9 (as a family we inherited the dog, and I have a lovely silver pendant that was hers), and I regret not having had the chance to know her as an adult.

2. Do you have your children's names picked out already? If so, is there any significance?

No. There are a lot of names I like, but if I was ever to marry and have children, I'd like to think that we'd pick out the names together.

At the moment, though, that looks like a very remote possibility anyway. I'm very single, and like it that way!

3. If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name have been?

Nathan, apparently.

My Mum lost a twin when she was expecting me, and I've always believed it was a boy, and tend to think of him as Nathan, simply because that's the name I would have had if I'd been a boy.

4. If you could re-name yourself what name would you pick and why?

I honestly don't know. I went through phases of hating my name when I was growing up, but I'm used to being me now!

Are there any mispronunciations/typos that people do with your name constantly?

My name is Joanna. Practically everyone I've ever known has called me 'Joanne' at some point or another - some of them so persistently that I've given up correcting them. I don't know why it is that everyone insists on converting my second 'a' into an 'e', but they do, both in writing and speaking.

I'm known as Jo for short, which is traditionally the female spelling of the name. Yet it is amazing the number of people who consistently write to me as 'Joe', the male version!

6. What are your nicknames? Where did they come from?

My middle name is Katherine, and as a child my entire family knew me as 'Jo-Katie'. I think that's the only nickname I've ever really had.

Online I tend to either use some variation of my real name, or I'm known as 'Llywela' because I wanted something nicely anonymous and Welsh sounding. I also wanted something that wasn't likely to already be in use by about a million other people, and came up with that as suitably unusual - a feminine form of Llywelyn: the last independent ruler in Wales.