A Plethora of “Emmas”
I always get excited when people ask me what my full name is. Even though my middle name is popular (and apparently my first name, too), it feels like everything falls into place when I say, “Emma Elizabeth Eichenberger” because my initials spell out “EEE”, which perfectly describes the squealing noise I make whenever I’m excited about something. Ask my friends, and they’ll tell you I’m just about pumped for anything. My parents always told me that they had a name picked out for me well before I was born. Based on my dad’s genetics, they figured out early on that I was going to be a girl. Being the youngest of four males, it was more than likely that my dad’s children would also be the same gender. After realizing my sister was a girl (they had picked the name Crispin in case the baby boy had curly hair), they already knew what to name me: Emma. Mom always said it meant for “warrior”, but I found the Germanic name to mean “whole” or “universal”.
I also realized that it’s the most popular name for girls in the United States, and I feel slightly uneasy about that. As a small child, I was a “hellion”, as my mother lovingly describes me, and to think about all the tiny Emmas running around the world makes me feel sorry for their parents, …show more content…
When Aunt Susie married Uncle Chris and had my cousins Madelyn and Brigid, the two girls unintentionally inherited the middle names, with their full names ending up as being Madelyn Elizabeth and Brigid Anne. Then, when Auntie Jo got married into the family, she believed that the names “Anne” and “Elizabeth” were handed down through the Donohoe line as some sort of family tradition. Because of this, she gave her daughter Zoe the middle name of Anne, before realizing that the repetitions of “Elizabeth” and “Anne” were nothing more that random circumstance within the
I always get excited when people ask me what my full name is. Even though my middle name is popular (and apparently my first name, too), it feels like everything falls into place when I say, “Emma Elizabeth Eichenberger” because my initials spell out “EEE”, which perfectly describes the squealing noise I make whenever I’m excited about something. Ask my friends, and they’ll tell you I’m just about pumped for anything. My parents always told me that they had a name picked out for me well before I was born. Based on my dad’s genetics, they figured out early on that I was going to be a girl. Being the youngest of four males, it was more than likely that my dad’s children would also be the same gender. After realizing my sister was a girl (they had picked the name Crispin in case the baby boy had curly hair), they already knew what to name me: Emma. Mom always said it meant for “warrior”, but I found the Germanic name to mean “whole” or “universal”.
I also realized that it’s the most popular name for girls in the United States, and I feel slightly uneasy about that. As a small child, I was a “hellion”, as my mother lovingly describes me, and to think about all the tiny Emmas running around the world makes me feel sorry for their parents, …show more content…
When Aunt Susie married Uncle Chris and had my cousins Madelyn and Brigid, the two girls unintentionally inherited the middle names, with their full names ending up as being Madelyn Elizabeth and Brigid Anne. Then, when Auntie Jo got married into the family, she believed that the names “Anne” and “Elizabeth” were handed down through the Donohoe line as some sort of family tradition. Because of this, she gave her daughter Zoe the middle name of Anne, before realizing that the repetitions of “Elizabeth” and “Anne” were nothing more that random circumstance within the