Marina's a really pretty name [yes] It is genuinely unusual isn't it, I've never met anyone called that before.

Thank you!

It's a fairly uncommon name, probably because nobody wants to name their child after a boat dock. :P I've run into three other Marina's in my life, and all three of them were European. Perhaps it's more popular there?

Maybe it is! The only other Marina I know is a character from Stingray.



I loved that show so much when I was a kid ><

My name is Nisha Gayathri. My name's got a funny story, actually.

Supposedly, my paternal grandmother's cousin sister knew that I was going to be a girl, and said that if I was named after Gayathri, the Indian goddess of... almost everything good, it would benefit me a lot. So that became my middle name.

As for my first name, my grandmother's name is Nirmala and my grandfather's name is Shyamsunder (the 'y' is silent), so they took Ni from my grandma's and Sha from my grandpa's and named me Nisha.

I like my name and there's no way I'm changing it in hell. My name's kinda like an oxymoron if you look at it. There's both darkness and light in it (Nisha means night).

But my best friends call me Kira-chan.

Making a new name from a combo of family names is a super cool thing to do :D Also, Nisha's a really cute and pretty name. =3

My name is not Robert. It would have been if I was born a boy. My dad was a twin but unfortunately his brother died shortly after birth from suffocation. His name was Robert and my dad wanted to have someone living with that name. So my younger brother has the name Robert. He has the best nick name from his loving older sister (that would be me) I call him Abbott. No one else does *sad face* But it's a riot to yell out "HEY ABBOTT!!" to him.

As for my names are we going to play guess my middle names again?? :P
I like my first name, it's a fairly common name but with a less common spelling. My family went with the French spelling, a spelling more commonly used for sur-names. My name when said with a French accent sounds very French. XD

Ling is my Chinese name, it means clever, quick, sensitive depending on the context.

I have an English name too, and my parents chose that name while watching a gameshow. I was named after a contestant who was doing really well on that gameshow night after night until she won all she could in prizes. The name itself is a derivative of one of many European names that means beauty, but I think being named after a successful gameshow contestant is more interesting.

My real first name is Heather. My parents just really found it pretty, simple and easy enough to say. My middle name, Anastasia, was chosen after a patient that had when they were serving (they are Veterans of the US Navy) over seas. I'm fond of my first and middle names. My last names are just my father's surname and my mother's.

People have such interesting names :')

My real name is Cherish. I won't insult your intelligence by telling you what it means.

People always expect a really interesting story behind it, but there isn't one; my dad pulled it out his arse, and my mum liked it too.

I've always loved my name and consider it to be very much a perpetual part of my identity. I get told I suit it or "look like a Cherish" fairly frequently.
I've never even considered changing it. Perhaps it's because I've never met another Cherish- I am THE Cherish. It is who I am. The thought of becoming a Sarah or a Claire is as odd to me as the thought of becoming a giraffe.

You go, girl! That's one unique name, right there. "Cherish" your name[lol]

My names Serena, I don't know why my mom named me that but I don't go by it. to most of my friends I am known as Aika. I picked it myself, it means "love song" in Japanese.

I don't hate my real name I just prefer Aika. =3

Aika is a really cool name[yes]

My real name's Nausheen.
It means 'beautiful' in Old Persian, and apparently 'new snow' as well. I guess it works because I was born towards the end of November. But the funny thing is, I have two younger siblings (one brother and one sister) and all of our names start with 'N-A'. Those two letter are also the last two letters of my mom's name. So yeah, that's my name for you.
No one has been able to pronounce it properly for the last 18 years of my life, though XD

I find a lot of people from the South Asian community fitting their names to suit western accents, if you know what I mean. I'm kind of glad people don't give me a nickname for my name; it's hard to do with a name like Nausheen (or maybe I'm just not that creative) and it takes away from the actual meaning of a name.
I asked my mom why she named me the way she did, and she told me she didn't remember [gonk] I'm the only Nausheen that I know in my community XD (I'm Bengali)

My name is Rei. I chose it. It's my middle name and represents me better than my first name.

Rei is a cool name. I've seen it spelled a lot of different ways, so I guess that makes it cooler [yes] Do you know what your middle name means, by any chance?

Omg another Indian in our midst! XD
Nausheen is a pretty name. So is Rei.

I've totally seen this thread and keep spacing on actually posting!

My name is Olivia, which my mum, who got dad in on it, wanted to name us - her twins -with names that started with the same letter, so I'm Olivia and my twin was Oliver. But we never really went by our given names - we had so many nicknames for each other. The only one who ever calls me Olivia these days is my mum and my Nan, most people call me Liv or Livi (Or mumma - what my eldest calls me, or ma ma ma, as my youngest says, although sometimes I don't know if she really means it... but she does seem to say it more when she sees me, so we assume she is). [yes] :)

my name is allison noelani, my middle name is hawaiian and means heavenly peace. i'm the only kid in my family with a hawaiian name. my friends call me PolySwagMaster, Sweggy, Allis, Ally, and my daddy calls me princess or kitten.

Russian nicknames (or does this count as a diminutive? Must research) are strange like that, for instance, my name is Alexandra, and the Russian nickname for that is Sasha. Which is what my parents called me when I was little. Which is strange, because we aren't Russian.

But then, English language nicknames can be strange too. Who thought Peggy was a good nickname for Margaret?
Is it terrible that I find the phrase "decided on the snake people" hilarious? [Oops]

Changing names, now there's a topic. I recently found out (for the first time I think, but with my memory...) that Queen Victoria's real name was Alexandrina, and that she was called Drina for most of her childhood. After she was pronounced queen she asked that it be dropped and that she be addressed by her middle name.

I like the meaning behind salvete's name :)

Ha! I know what adaption jupiter watched.

@ allycat - I've never met anyone with a hawaiian name before. Noelani is really pretty~ [yes] That's really cool! Do you live in Hawaii? Or is anyone in your family Hawaiian? [:o]

I have a really boring name.
I'm Alexis and my parents say they named me after an actress who my dad really liked. But I think that's dumb because when I ask them what movies she was in, they tell me they don't remember. :|
I think the truth is, they wanted to name me after some expensive because my name was going to be Crystal, but when my parents heard about the name Alexis, it reminded them of the Lexus car , and that's an expensive car , so they decided to go with that name instead and make my middle name Crystal.
My parents also came up with my name three days after I was born. =_= So I was pretty much named on the fly, they didn't think of names before I was born or anything!