do you like your name?  i hated my name growing up.  i’m sure not an uncommon woe of a 9 year old.  honestly, i have a strangely clear memory of being in the elementary school bathroom, waiting in line, talking to other little girls and thinking to myself, “why can’t my name be jennifer or heather.  and, remember when you’d play house, store or restaurant and you always had to have a pretend name?  i usually went by nicole (due to my admiration of my older cousin).  i wasn’t happy with my cabbage patch kids name either…willma.  so since i could,  i re-named my cabbage patch kid to sandy nicole (sandy after my dog that died and nicole, again, after my cousin.  i think i even asked her if it would be ok to used nicole for the middle name – oh boy!) and i even remember my friend jill and i used to play “vicki and nickie” whenever we hung out.  we just pretended to be older girls driving around and having boyfriends (ughh… i know)….just don’t ask me about acting like kirk cameron was my boyfriend at the park in front of other kids or how i would “pretend” to drive the mini van when someone came over to my house (yes, i have a lot of stories?).

anyways, i wish i could say that my name was after a distant relative that did something noble, but it’s not.  if i was a boy i was going to be timothy (timothy tompkins- yuck) and i’ve been told that my mom wanted to name me katherine.  however, one day, at church, my dad heard the pastor announce his new granddaughter’s name, which was trina and he liked it.  so that was it….trina tompkins.  i’m not catrina.  just trina.  in high school i saw a trina turk label and felt much better about my name.  a fewllow “trina” and a fellow “t.t.”

of course, as you get older you settle into your name and don’t make such a deal out of it.  you just, sort of, become it.

i didn’t really pay much attention to names, again, until i started having babies.  and that was serious business,  you know.  first starting with ella grace, which the mister did not completely agree to until i was having major contractions (childbirth sometimes works wonders with men -ha).  all of my kids names have very special meaning to me.  and that is just it.  of course, we picked names that we like the sound of but its whats behind the name that is really who they are.  which got me thinking.

are we really what we are called?  i took an account of a few other people in my life and started looking up the meanings of their names.  for one, my grandpa (who you have heard me talk about), his name was warren, which means, defender, protecting friend, loyal, protector and guard.  there could be no better description of him.  my sisters name means beloved and she is surely is.  maybe i am on to something.

i know it might not always be true or work out this way but i had to know if there was any truth in what i was being called day after day, year after year.  i’ve always known that my name derives from katherine (funny, isn’t it since that is what my mom wanted to name me) and that in short it means pure (cue an eye roll from my brother and sister).

after i got looking though, i found that trina it is of scandinavian origin (maybe this has something to do with my love for scandinavian design) meaning pure and clear.  other origins are pretty much along the same lines.  pure is nice, yes, and i like the addition of clear (transparent, free from confusion, uncertainty and doubt) but i thought there might be more?  so i kept digging (because that is what i like to do) and decided why not look up the synonyms?  i won’t list every one but a few that stuck out to me are authentic, bright, classic, complete, natural, plain (feel this way a lot), neat (4 kids kind of messes with this one), simple, true and transparent.  i am not saying i am all of these things but what i would say is that they are all things i’d aspire to be.  although i’m a very private person (i know it doesn’t seem that way when i write on the internet, but i really am), i always try to be authentic.  authenticity is very important to me, both in regards to myself and those around me.  although, i like modern and stylish things, truth be told, you’ll likely always find a bit of classic mixed in (i just don’t think i can escape it entirely), i used to think simple was overrated but now i don’t see any sense in complicating things and love the idea of simplifying.  i want to be true (this encompasses a lot) and transparent (which goes along with authenticity).  and of course, i want to be bright.  yes, i’ll take bright as in smart but, by bright i mean i want my life to be a light.  not in a “shiny” (although i like shiny things) way but rather a light that lends warmth, a brightness that shines when there is darkness and a shimmer when dull needs to be brightened away.

basically, i want to be more me. 

what about you you?  have you really ever looked into what your name means?  does your name ring true to who you are or who you want to be?

on a fun note . . . some other names i used for make believe growing up were drew and then sandy or shelly when i was playing mermaid, duh!

and what about this?  did you have your kids names picked out in high school?  mine were, trevor and maisy. ha!

what were your play names?

also, i like this site for name searching.

gorgeous images by my talented photographer friend noelle ann