Identity Crisis

Juliet once said "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

I have always had a love-hate relationship with my name. It's short and sweet but oh so complicated in America. I've gotten Hair-rell, High-rul, Hee-rall and a plethora or others over the course of my lifetime. Nevertheless, I liked my full name, it suited me just fine and led to many, many user names and emails addresses. If I had to pick the one thing I most disliked about my name, it would be the fact there is no possible nickname. Can't call me Hi, Hir, Ral, Al...when everyone has a super awesome nickname, all I got called was Harold (thanks a lot sis) and Hirally. Sigh.

Then came the day I had to change my last name. I always managed to ignore the fact that my upcoming nuptials would require a name change. Then it hit me..as I was sitting in the Conway's Social Security Administration office, I was really doing this. There was no turning back. Then came the thoughts of how I wanted my name to be. Keep my middle name, take my old last name as my middle name, keep everything and hyphenate! HVA, HPA, HKA, HVPA..the initials themselves were complicated, everything sounded like a disease!! The possiblities were endless and kind of scary. I'd have to live with this for the rest of my life. I slightly panicked a bit.

Typical Indian tradition has the girl taking her husband's first name as her middle name along with his last name. This is something that everyone in my family has done...well I was never one to follow the rules because everyone else was. I decided to keep my middle name (which is my dad's first name) and only take Kunal's last name.  I really didn't want too much of Kunal in my name.

HVA, my new initials..they just don't flow as nicely as HVP did. I decided to drop the V and just be HA. So now, I will forever be known as laughter. Ha ha ha.