My Name Means Queen, and That is How I Feel

Daily writing prompt

If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?

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I love my name: Regina. As a child with a name that no one else I knew had, I felt special. Finding reasons to feel special was important to me as a lonely child. I knew of only one other person with my name, and she was a neighbor of one of my aunts. I also knew that Regina was the capital of Saskatchewan, Canada, which seemed cool to me. I once started to visit the city of Regina, but the weather and snow weren’t conducive to someone who lived in the sunny, warm South.

When I met my husband of nearly twenty years, he told me that my name meant “queen.” He calls me his queen, and he treats me like a queen. I feel special again. He calls me by my name, never a shortened form because he likes telling people that my name fits me.

My children shortened my name. They were my nieces and nephews before my sister, their mother, died unexpectedly. They call me “Gina.” It has never been Aunt Gina or Mama, just Gina. However, when they call my name, I hear Mama. It has a different tone and touches my heart and soul in ways that the words Mama or Mother do for other women. My grandchildren call me Grandma Gina and Granny Gina, and one says Mon, which nobody knows where that came from. I answer to them all, except never to Hey You or Yo!

So, I would not change my name. I love the one that my mother gave me. In elementary school, one of my teachers insisted on calling me Virginia because that was the name placed on my birth certificate. I told my mother that I didn’t like being called Virginia, like the state. She went to the school with my birth certificate and showed the teacher that Virginia had been crossed out and my name changed (and it appears that way today). So she told her to please call me by the right name, and she did from that day. I still think of it as a perfect name for me, and this queen wouldn’t change it for the world.