What's in a name?

I have been thinking lately about the incredibly difficult and painful process we went through in order to choose Zachary's name. We were so determined to choose something interesting, but not too weird, and not too popular. Zachary was number 33 on the Social Security Administration's most popular baby names for 2006. I thought that was low enough that it wouldn't be too common. Well, as we've seen, there is another Zachary in our swimming class, and last week I noticed that one of the babies in the class immediately before ours is also named Zachary. That's 3 out of 14 babies. Well, I tried to console myself by thinking that with so many Zacharys around, at least his name will be spelled correctly. I was wrong. Misspellings we have had of Zachary so far (and, I still love you all, but these did come from friends and family):

Zackery

Zachery

Zachariah

I was hoping to save Zachary from the curse of a difficult name to spell (or even to pronounce). I love my name, but it has rarely been spelled correctly over the years, even on official documents. That goes for my maiden name, too. Just tonight, my sandwich order came out under the name "Marida." I have never even heard of someone named Marida. My favorite misspellings of my name over the years are (loosely in order of frequency):

Merideth

Meridith

Merrideth

Marydith

Nedda

Yes, that last one is actually on the list. And it has happened several times, always on the telephone. I must speak really quickly, for my name to drop a syllable like that. However, people I have called in the past have received messages along the lines of "Nedda called."

Anyway, I was hoping we had chosen a name that was beyond all of these issues, but it appears we were wrong. And he'll always have to sit in the last row of the classroom, too.