Friday, August 31, 2007

What's in a Name?


If I had been a boy, my name would have been Nevada. My Mom is eternally grateful that I was a girl. She named me Elizabeth, which means “consecrated to God”. She says that is what she did when she found out I had been conceived. My Dad was afraid people would sully my beautiful name by shortening it to Liz, Beth, or Betsy. So he called me Lisa, which is a derivative of Elizabeth. He explained this to all my teachers, and I grew up being called Lisa. (Once he teased that he would call me "Lee" and take me to work at his construction site - I thought this would be fun, but he was just kidding.)

My middle name, Kathryn, means "pure".

Gerold is my maiden name, and Miller is my married name.

In real life, I do not hyphenate my name. The reason I do so on my blog is basically to "hedge my bets".

In high school I remember someone saying, "Elizabeth Kathryn Gerold is such a literary-sounding name!" I actually kept my maiden name for a full five years because I felt it was part of my identity. Then I had it changed to Miller.

So far, I have submitted all of my works in the name of Miller. However, I had always thought I would publish my novels in the name of Gerold. I also thought about Elizabeth Gerold Miller, except that would remove my beloved middle name.

I would love to hear what my readers think.

2 comments:

Natalia said...

Elizabeth: Firstly, I like the sound of all four names! I think that Gerold-Miller is a really memorable (and literary-sounding) name - which is probably good in the writing profession. If you hyphenate, it makes the four names look like three, probably a little easier to 'sell' to a publisher? But I wouldn't really know first-hand about that.

Secondly, I so did not expect to see my name and site on your blog, that I thought it was about someone else at first! LOL I was so surprised I blushed! LOL Thank you so very much! It was so sweet of you!

Thirdly and not least, thank you so much for your reply about the eye exercises. I'm sorry I'm so slow - I was checking your comments and not whether you'd edited the blog entry itself. I didn't realize for several days that you had already replied! Thank you so much for all the helpful information and I will be looking into that in detail for my boys.

All the best....

Loren said...

I like your name exactly how you have it now. I agree that it sounds literary, and it represents you in your totality, like you explained. I'd leave it. :)