What's in a name? How I got the name, Alix Rose.

What is in a name?

You might know this, but Alix Rose is not my legal name. Alix is the shortened version of my full first name, Alixandrea, but Rose has a little bit of a story. Rose is my mom's middle name, but when she was in high school it was the name she went by - in fact when she runs into her friends from high school they call out her Rose instead of Jenny. There's a longer story there, but that's my mom's story. Rose comes from Saint Rose de Lima, her feast day is August 30th - my mom's birthday.  An old practice of Catholic families that not many follow today is to name their child after the Saint of the day they were born.

If people still followed that practice today, my name would be Monica. My full name would be Maria Monica because in the 1800s an old traditional Mexican practice was to give all girls the first name Maria.

I have no doubt that I would be a completely different person if I went through life as Monica. I feel like Alixandrea fits me now, but I didn't like it for a long time. It was too long; it was spelled weird, and people were always surprised to learn that I was a girl.

Going by Alix didn't help any, but in high school when my friends were changing the way they spelled their names or going by nicknames, I realized that I was Alix.

I don't know if I grew into it or we just grew together.

Rose came years later and way before the blog. When you go through confirmation (another Catholic practice) you're allowed to choose a name. I chose Mary after the Virgin Mary, she was and continues to be a guiding light in my life. So it felt right. I have no regrets I just wished I could have chosen two names. Rose comes from another strong woman, my mom. It also just fit after Alixandrea, it rolled like it was always meant to be there. You know things get lost, broken, but names are things you can pass down - well if I have a girl. I didn't think about my future children when I decided to add Rose to my long name. I just knew it was always meant to be part of me.

Names are chosen for you, sometimes you get to name yourself, but sometimes names choose you, and that's certainly the case for me when it comes to Rose.

So that's how Alix Rose came to be. I'm a strong headed Taurus that realized I might not have been born with the name Rose, but it belonged to me. Alixandrea Rose is not legal yet, but it will be.

When I decided to launch this blog, I didn't know what I wanted to name it. If you have a blog, you know the struggle. So, I decided to name after me. I've come up with other blog names in the years since, and I was super close to relaunching under another name, but like the name Alix, it's grown on me. And now I can't imagine having a blog by any other name.

I meant to just write a quick write up on how I got my blog name and all of a sudden this turned into a novel on how Rose became my name.

Thanks for reading.