My parents were convinced I was going to be a boy, and were going to call me Christopher Robin (see! I escaped a fate worse than death, there…) They had not picked out a girl’s name. Then, when I proved to have one less penis than necessary for the definition, my dad, who had been reading a sci-fi book, said, “How about Alia?”… So I am named after a cute little toddler who kills her grandfather and, in order to prevent herself from killing her brother, commits suicide.

When my parents read the second book–where she goes crazy– they wrote the author a panicked letter but he reassured them that it was a real name… it means exalted one in Arabic, which is very nice. He didn’t mention that, in latin, it kind of translates as The Other Woman…

-Alia

…and in Hebrew it (though usually spelled Aliyah) means literally “ascent” or more generally “immigration to Israel.” Exalted other woman flies to Israel…interesting….