11/2/05

Different Names

I was supposed to be named Madeline—after the French cartoon character—but instead I was named after a soap opera character named Kassie. I don’t remember what the soap opera was called, but I was told that the character Kassie was a rich girl who was very polite but she always appeared sad. My parents named me Kassie because it sounded unique (Only for the girls in my family, my parents tried finding unique names for us or they would have a good reason to our names). My middle name is a family name from my moms’ side of the family. Each girl will have the name Marie in her names. Since I was second born, Marie became my middle name (Which is good, because I don’t want it to be my first name). My last name sounds like a Spanish name; then again, it probably is because the Philippines is a Spanish colony.

My first nickname was Whale. I wasn’t fat or anything, it was because one of my close friends was nicknamed Killer. Since I was hanging out with her a lot, someone came up with “Killer Whale”. In 7th grade, I was given another nickname from my cousin who started calling me Kiseki, which is Japanese for Miracle. She use to write stories, so in some of her stories, she’d have my name be Kiseki. But as time went by, her memory became worst, causing her to forget the nickname, her stories, and certain things that she use to do (she just has poor memory). Yet, sometimes when I see her, she’ll call me Kiseki without knowing why. In 8th grade, my group of friends discovered an anime called “Fruits Basket.” After watching that anime for a while, my friends changed my nickname to Hatsuharu (at least it sounds better then Whale) because they claim I have a lot of similarities to him especially when I’m mad. During summer time, one of my other cousins, whose part Japanese, wanted to know my name translation. After he found out what it was, he started calling me by that name: Kashii Marii.

I use to hate my name for no apparent reason—maybe because of how people would miss spell it during Christmas or how some people would have a hard time saying it, but when I found out the history behind my name, I began loving it including all those strange nicknames I was given. That nickname, Kiseki, I think if I had the chance, I would have changed it to that, but I’m good with the name I was given at birth.