Intro: name
Dec. 6th, 2022 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaOne of my friends on fb posted an introduction meme and asked us to participate. This was my contribution.
Name: has changed and evolved. At birth my parents thought that with a family name like Chmielowski we didn't need middle names, so they called me Marie. We moved to Japan around the time I was learning to talk, and thus my name was lengthened with the traditional term of endearment for kids: Marie-Chan, but in Japanese there isn't a real difference between r and d, so I always heard it as Muddy-Chan, which, given my love for splashing in puddles, was very appropriate. Then I got a little sister, who thought Marie and Muddy-Chan were both too much/hard to say, so I became Re, which got lengthened to Re-ia. When I turned 21 my name was legally changed to Reia Marie Chmielowski. Meanwhile, while in High School, I discovered medieval reenactment in the form of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and needed a "Medieval name". So I put a Ka- in front of Reia and chose Talvi (Finnish for Winter) and Mädchen (German for girl) as a surname, and submitted it to the College of Heralds to be registered along with my coat of arms. But they couldn't find any examples in the history books of the name Kareia, and they thought that three languages in one name was a bit much. So after consulting wirh a herald I added an n, to make it Kareina, and went with Talvi Tytär (winter, daughter), and that was registered, and I had two names. One I used with my medieval friends, and one for everything else. But when I moved to Sweden I discovered that most European languages pronounce vowels differently, which meant that they were saying "ray-ah", instead of "ree-ah". Therefore I changed the spelling to Riia, and now people always pronounce right. Somewhere in there my Finnish speaking friends explained to me that to follow the rules of name grammar my SCA surname name should be Talventytär (winter's daughter), so I changed it. So now I have two names: Riia M. Chmielowski is the one who publishes academic research articles, and Kareina Talventytär is the one who does all the cool medieval arts, crafts, dancing, singing, etc.
There is more I could share, but that essay will do for a "quick" intro!
Name: has changed and evolved. At birth my parents thought that with a family name like Chmielowski we didn't need middle names, so they called me Marie. We moved to Japan around the time I was learning to talk, and thus my name was lengthened with the traditional term of endearment for kids: Marie-Chan, but in Japanese there isn't a real difference between r and d, so I always heard it as Muddy-Chan, which, given my love for splashing in puddles, was very appropriate. Then I got a little sister, who thought Marie and Muddy-Chan were both too much/hard to say, so I became Re, which got lengthened to Re-ia. When I turned 21 my name was legally changed to Reia Marie Chmielowski. Meanwhile, while in High School, I discovered medieval reenactment in the form of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and needed a "Medieval name". So I put a Ka- in front of Reia and chose Talvi (Finnish for Winter) and Mädchen (German for girl) as a surname, and submitted it to the College of Heralds to be registered along with my coat of arms. But they couldn't find any examples in the history books of the name Kareia, and they thought that three languages in one name was a bit much. So after consulting wirh a herald I added an n, to make it Kareina, and went with Talvi Tytär (winter, daughter), and that was registered, and I had two names. One I used with my medieval friends, and one for everything else. But when I moved to Sweden I discovered that most European languages pronounce vowels differently, which meant that they were saying "ray-ah", instead of "ree-ah". Therefore I changed the spelling to Riia, and now people always pronounce right. Somewhere in there my Finnish speaking friends explained to me that to follow the rules of name grammar my SCA surname name should be Talventytär (winter's daughter), so I changed it. So now I have two names: Riia M. Chmielowski is the one who publishes academic research articles, and Kareina Talventytär is the one who does all the cool medieval arts, crafts, dancing, singing, etc.
There is more I could share, but that essay will do for a "quick" intro!