What's in a Name?

"what's in a name? that which we call a rose

by any other name would smell as sweet."

--shakespeare's romeo and juliet

yeah, i'm a total cheeser for shakespeare. and yet, this question puzzles me.

what IS in a name?

more specifically, my name.

my name originally wasn't supposed to be melissa.

it was supposed to be emma.

seriously?

emma?

that was the plan, according to my mother.

we can all thank my father for naming me melissa.

the moment i was born, he just looked at me and said- her name's melissa.

sweet and simple.

the definition of my name tells me that it's greek for honeybee.

possibly that accounts for my sarcastic 'sting', if you will.

or maybe it means that secretly deep down somewhere,

i'm a huge softie.

riiiiiiight.

but if we're going to question names, then we should do the same for nicknames.

and i surely have a lot of those.

some of those, however, are easier to explain.

smiley

a nickname given to me by my family, since i was small.

you may or may not believe it, but i was what you'd like to call a "total ham"

i was always smiling.

i told someone this, and they asked me

"are you sure it wasn't because of miley cyrus??"

....

are you kidding me?

she wasn't even born yet people. wake up.

melis

other variations include melis-dawg or melis-like diddy

my middle school nicknames.

ahh....those were some good days.

my name was usually always followed by a shortened version of a sentence

courtesy of porter, kit, mitch, trent or hansen

my favorites being:

"hey melis can i borrow a piece of papes?"

or

"melis-dawg can i have some skits?"

usually in spanish class.

we can thank bryttan for melis-like diddy.

one word, one person.

brilliant.

meliosa

"it's melioooosa, not meliosaaaa."

the most popular and widely known by far.

thanks to adam shelton sophomore year,

a typo was made on the audition list for

the ballroom company at my high school.

"meliosa?" was called

and no one stepped forward.

"melissa?" responded jeanne angrily,

looking at adam.

and from then on, all my new coaches knew me as was

meliosa.

they couldn't help but call me it

and so it stuck.

unfortunately, many people think this is actually my real name.

i think i broke a few freshmen hearts when they heard someone call me

melissa...

but this, undoubtedly is my favorite nickname.

however accidental it may have been, i love it.

gus

[pronounced 'goose']

variations include gus gus, goose, and gus.*

*[pronounced 'gus']

this one's tricky.

i'll have to diagram it out.

meliosa became me gusta,

during wayne's spanish phase

and soon became me gusta queso.

espanol for 'i like cheese.'

clever, since it sounds relatively close to my actual name.

and actually, i do like cheese.

me gusta queso shortened to just gus

[pronounced 'goose']

because that's how we roll in spanish.

heather began to call me gus gus

[pronounced 'goose goose']

leading to confusion, we were reminded of cinderella and the mice

jack and gus gus

[pronounced 'gus gus']

the inseperable duo were the best of friends;

this lead to me calling jensen jackie,

the female version of jack.

it's quite an evolution of sorts, you could say.

all thanks to adam shelton.

so what does this leave me with?

what is in a name?

my name?

this what i've decided.

i have multiple names, but they all add up to the same thing:

one

brunette

girl

eighteen

average

and

insane.

and oddly enough, that's good enough for me.