You know, my name causes me a lot of problems. That’s because my legal name is Frances and my middle name is Deborah, but nobody has ever called me Frances or Franny. It’s Debbie or Deb, but not Frances. (It’s also never Debbi with a little heart over the “i.” Not ever. Got it?) It’s also not Debby. No.

I’ve never used Frances, though. My dad wanted me to be named Frances after my mom. (Francis was also his middle name.) My mom wanted Deborah, supposedly because it meant ’strong willed.’ I’ve been looking around for definitions of the name that say it means strong willed, but the closest I can find is industrious. Rumor has it that my dad went down to the office at the hospital (?) and changed it to Frances Deborah from Deborah Frances.  Let me give you a few examples of some of the trouble all of this causes.

All of my work stuff, like pay checks, insurance cards, and the like are under Frances Deborah. So is my license and my registration.  A lot of my other stuff, like my resume, is F. Deborah. It’s tough for the people at Rite Aid pharmacy because they may get a prescription called in for Frances Della Piana. However, I am in their system as Deborah Della Piana.

When I was a kid, the nuns refused to use the correct spelling of my name, which is Deborah, because it was of Jewish origin. They refused to use it, and would send my report cards home with the name Debra. Who the fuck is that? That isn’t my name? I was most unhappy about that, and let me tell you, so was my mother. She named me, after all. The nuns learned pretty quickly not to call me ‘Frances’ in the classroom because I would not raise my hand or acknowledge the name.

Even my dad, who wanted my first name to be Frances, never called me Frances. To him, I was Debbie. It’s pretty clear that my father won the battle, but my mother won the war. So there you go. But that’s just one of the ‘name things’ going on in my family. The other ‘name thing’ is nicknames. This didn’t involve me. My nickname was Debbie. But it did involve several other people in my family.

First, my sister’s name is Mary. Everybody calls her Mamie, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Mamie Eisenhower. We’re not sure how that happened. My Aunt Florence was actually called Auntie Muff. I’m not even going there. My Aunt Buddy is the most complicated, though. Her real name is Aurora because she was born when the Aurora Borealis was visible. She hated the name Aurora, so she used her middle name, Ann. But we all called her Aunt Buddy. (And let me tell you, she’s nobody’s buddy, either but that’s a different story for a different day.)

My Uncle Salvy had two sons. One was called Gigi (his real name was Frank) and the other was nicknamed Nanny (he was Anthony). And hold it a minute, we’re not talking the pronounciation of the Leslie Caron movie, Gigi. For the nickname, the ‘G’ is hard and the ‘i’ is pronounced like a long ‘e’.

This whole process seemed to really take hold in my Uncle Tony’s family (my mother’s brother). He and his wife had fourteen children. That’s right, fourteen children. 14. Here’s a little listing of his childrens’ nicknames:

Gay is actually Philip

Dukie is Marilyn

Dusty is Christine

Winkie is Louise

This seemed to be a phenomenon on my mother’s side of the family, although it did extend slightly to my dad’s side. In fact, my dad’s name was Julius and everyone called him Juju. He also had a sister and cousin who were both named Phyllis. To distinguish between the two, we called his cousin Big Philly because she was tall and skinny. I suspect, however, that my mother was behind both of these nicknames.

W-T-F?